[Gateway] Speaking to the New York Post from jail, Avenatti said he is in contact with Trump’s legal team and is willing to speak out against his former client.
"The defense has contacted me," Avenatti told The Post.
Avenatti is currently being held at Terminal Island, a minimum-security federal prison in Los Angeles, serving a 19-year sentence for a slate of federal crimes that include extortion, tax evasion, fraud, and embezzlement.
"I’d be more than happy to testify, I don’t know that I will be called to testify, but I have been in touch with Trump’s defense for the better part of year," Avenatti said.
The Post reports that Avenatti would not provide any additional details about the discussion, but an unnamed source "close to Trump" confirmed that the discussions are taking place.
Avenatti used to be one of Trump’s loudest critics, but he has seemingly dramatically changed his position.
"There’s no question [the trial] is politically motivated because they’re concerned that he may be reelected," Avenatti told the newspaper. "If the defendant was anyone other than Donald Trump, this case would not have been brought at this time, and for the government to attempt to bring this case and convict him in an effort to prevent tens of millions of people from voting for him, I think it’s just flat out wrong, and atrocious."
"I’m really bothered by the fact that Trump, in my view, has been targeted. Four cases is just over the top and I think there’s a significant chance that this is going to all backfire and is going to propel him to the White House," Avenatti added.
The former lawyer continued, "Depending on what happens, this could constitute pouring jet fuel on his campaign."
[MAIL] An OB/GYN doctor practicing in Washington state has been charged with the rape of an underage female family member, which prosecutors say has been going on for more than six years.
Vulihn Ta, 51, is accused of raping the family member more than 15 times in a hot tub when she was 11 years old or younger.
The female victim, who is still underage, told police the doctor would buy her video games in a bid to stop her telling anyone about the alleged sexual assault.
Court documents say the abuse occurred between the years of 2017 and 2024, with the most recent sexual assault happening in early April, Fox 13 Seattle reported.
The sexual abuse allegedly began when Ta got a habit of following the victim after she took showers. This abuse went on for several more years, only to seemingly escalate once the home had a hot tub installed, according to court documents.
The relationship between the victim and the gynecologist is unknown.
[Bee] At a recent press conference, President Joe Biden recounted a harrowing tale from his family's past: the time when his uncle had his heart ripped out and was sacrificed during a mysterious ritual in India.
Biden somberly recounted the gruesome events, describing how his uncle had been lured into a dark temple deep in the jungles of India. With a furrowed brow and a trembling voice, Biden detailed the scene.
"There he was, my uncle, standing before a group of chanting priests with strange, twisted faces," Biden recounted, his eyes misting over with emotion. "And then, in an instant, they reached into his chest and pulled out his beating heart."
As gasps filled the room, Biden continued his gruesome tale, describing how the next thing he knew, his uncle was being lowered into a pit of molten lava, somehow screaming all the way down. His uncles' squadmates barely survived, Biden claimed, after narrowly escaping a collapsing rope bridge and also dodging a big round boulder.
"Seriously folks — not a joke!" Biden insisted, his hand placed solemnly over his heart. "And if you don't believe me, then I'm not a Professor of Archaeology."
At publishing time, Biden's face had become grim, his gaze piercing through the camera lens as he warned the press you never know what dangers lurk behind those ancient stone walls.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/21/2024
10:41 ||
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#1
Tell us about the time you ate monkey brains, Uncle Joe!
[Gateway] It has been more than 8 months since the FBI killed disabled veteran Theodore Deschler in a pre-dawn raid at his mother’s Tennessee home and they are refusing to provide any details about the case.
The Tennessee Star reached out to the FBI this week for answers about the deadly raid. The FBI told them to pound sand.
"We don’t discuss tactics, techniques or the way we operate," Memphis FBI Chief Division Counsel and Public Affairs Officer Joel Siskovic said to The Tennessee Star. "That’s not a question we would ever answer."
More than eight months after a raid that left a Henderson man dead, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) won’t disclose details about the case, while the local police department says they weren’t made aware of the raid until after it happened.
FBI agents shot and killed Theodore Deschler (pictured above) at his mother’s home where he lived in August of last year.
The circumstances surrounding his death remain murky. This week, The Tennessee Star followed up with the law enforcement entities involved in the deadly raid, but details remain hard to come by.
The Star asked the FBI what transpired before Theodore Deschler’s death.
"We don’t discuss tactics, techniques or the way we operate," Memphis FBI Chief Division Counsel and Public Affairs Officer Joel Siskovic said. "That’s not a question we would ever answer."
Siskovic said the FBI never discusses operations like the raid on Theodore Deschler’s home and that the only way to obtain more information is through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Then file a FOIA request
The family is also desperately seeking answers after FBI agents busted down the door to Bonnie Deschler’s home and killed her son Theodore Deschler in front of her in a pre-dawn raid last August.
The FBI is refusing to tell Bonnie Deschler why they showed up in armored vehicles at 6 am on August 16, pulled her out of the house, tossed her into the back of a police vehicle, and fatally shot her unarmed son.
"It’s none of your business!" FBI agents told her after they blew up her house and killed her son.
#5
The FBI Legal Counsel is engaging in misdirection. Tactics and Techniques are not the question but rather authority to conduct the Raid. What court authorized the Warrant, and what was the Probably Cause cited? Something is missing in the story here, since any competent lawyer would know to seek the answer from a filing with the relevant jurisdiction.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons , houses , papers , and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
[Hot Air] We could call this A Tale of Two Facilities. Iran launched an unprecedented direct attack on Israel in retaliation for the targeted strike on IRGC and Hamas commanders. That attack did little damage despite a volley of well over 300 missiles and drones, thanks to the regional defenses and the several hours of lead time necessitated by Iran's launch from its own territory.
That demonstrated the facility Iran has for offensive operations in the region. Israel responded by demonstrating its facility, and as the New York Times hears from officials in Iran and the West, the result shocked the Iranians:
An Israeli weapon deployed in a retaliatory strike against Iran on Friday damaged a defense system responsible for detecting and destroying aerial threats near Natanz, a central Iranian city critical to the country’s secret nuclear weapons program, according to two Western officials and two Iranian officials.
The strike, the Western officials said, was calculated to deliver a message to Iran that Israel could bypass Iran’s defense systems undetected and paralyze them, using a fraction of the fire power Iran deployed last week when it launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel. That attack, intercepted by Israel and its allies, caused minimal damage.
Their shock didn't just come from the fact that Israel had denuded their critical Natanz site of effective air defense. It didn't come from realizing just how far Israel could strike without entering its airspace, either. What truly shocked the Iranians is that they had no warning at all before their expensive S-300 system got destroyed from a single strike:
A missile, two Western officials said, was fired from a warplane far from Israeli or Iranian airspace and included technology that enabled it to evade Iran’s radar defenses. Neither the missile nor the aircraft that fired it entered Jordanian airspace, the Western officials said, a gesture meant to keep the kingdom out of the conflict after it helped shoot down Iranian weapons last week.
The two Iranian officials said that Iran’s military had not detected anything entering Iran’s airspace on Friday, including drones, missiles and aircraft. Iran’s state news agency, IRNA, reported that no missile attacks had occurred and that Iran’s air defense system had not been activated.
How precise was the attack? The NYT got a look at satellite imagery of the Natanz S-300 system, both before and after the attack. The missile strike destroyed the S-300 radar system while leaving other related equipment undamaged:
Images showed that the precision attack at the Eighth Shekari Air Base damaged or destroyed the “flap-lid” radar, which is used in S-300 air defense systems to track incoming targets. ...
Other areas of the air base and adjacent airport also appeared to be undamaged. The precision of the strike, deep within Iran and with several sensitive sites close by, suggested Israel chose the specific and narrow target, the air defense system.
The radar is the key to any air-defense system. Without radar, the defense system can't track incoming attacks, and its missiles can only fire blindly at fast-moving targets. The rest of the Natanz air-defense systems are useless until the Iranians replace the radar -- and now they know the Israelis can take out it again as fast as they replace it. And they can't see it coming, either. All of their anti-aircraft defense is based on the S-300, which means Israel could nullify it entirely before the Iranians are even aware they're under attack
Posted by: Mercutio ||
04/21/2024
08:19 ||
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#1
Oh my. Very useful information indeed, Mercutio.
#2
How precise was the attack? The NYT got a look at satellite imagery of the Natanz S-300 system, both before and after the attack. The missile strike destroyed the S-300 radar system while leaving other related equipment undamaged:
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] A brave Pennsylvania girl has spoken out furiously against teachers and administrators at her school after a transgender student savagely beat her friend using a Stanley cup.
The incident took place at Pennbrook Middle School Wednesday, when the 13-year-old blindsided her 12-year-old female victim in the school cafeteria using the cup, hitting her on the head and creating an open wound.
The unidentified student had to be hospitalized and get staples to close the cuts in her head before undertaking concussion protocol, according to police.
School Superintendent Todd Bauer said that the attack - which was caught on security camera - was 'deeply disturbing' in a statement at the start of Thursday's board meeting.
However, as one unidentified student bravely said, not only did she warn teachers the bullying student had 'a hit list' but she added that she was the next one to get assaulted had she not been stopped.
'You could've stopped it,' the brave young girl said. 'It was five hours from when I told you it was going to happen. I don't get how you couldn't have stopped that.'
She added there was a girl the bully was 'targeting every day at lunch. And they would go to the counselor every day and tell them this is going to happen.'
The assailant was blunt enough to scream 'I'm gonna murder you!' repeatedly at the students.
The girl spoke about how she and two fellow students filled out paperwork explaining what they knew was going to happen if nothing was done and said that she was warned 'watch your back' at lunch.
A teacher responded to her: 'Don't worry about it, it's not gonna' happen.'
She added that once the attack began, it lasted 28 minutes, despite the school board claiming it was just eight minutes.
'We had to watch [the victim] taken out with blood dripping down her face and I will never forget that! Laying in bed last night I just kept repeating it in my head.'
Parents shared their own outrage with the school's inability to protect the student and how this has been a shocking trend at the school and with parents hearing from their kids and not the adults in charge.
#1
You are wasting your time talking to the 'education professionals'. Take your outrage to the local DA and demand a grand jury. That is heat the gets a response.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/21/2024 9:37
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#3
re:#1
I hope you mean parents or real adults a 13 yr. old girl is hardly likely to NOT go to the supposed authority in the school. I've got 13 & 15 year old grand daughters and they would definitely go to
teachers or principals in this case.
[FoxNews] Former Clinton staffer Huma Abedin was spotted on a date to the New York Knicks' playoff game with George Soros' son, Alex Soros on Saturday.
The pair, who have been rumored to be dating since February, had courtside tickets, and Soros was said to be on his phone throughout the game, according to the New York Post.
Abedin, 47, and Soros, 38, watched the Knicks defeat the Philadelphia 76ers 111-104.
Soros took over his father's $25 billion global empire last year, and he has been spotted spending time with top Democrats in the months since.
[FoxNews] The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is illegally collecting data of every citizen who invests in the stock market, according to a new lawsuit.
The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) filed the suit Tuesday against the SEC claiming that the agency, through its "Consolidated Audit Trail," or "CAT," program, is collecting mass amounts of personally identifiable data by forcing brokers, exchanges, clearing agencies and alternative trading systems to capture and send detailed information on every investor’s trades in U.S. markets to a centralized database.
The agency is doing so, NCLA says, without authorization from Congress and in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable government search and seizure of private information.
Conceived during the Obama administration with bipartisan support within the Commission, the CAT program is a multibillion-dollar, self-appropriated fund, powered by various fees the SEC has collected through investment transactions, NCLA says. The group calls it "completely unlawful" and says it puts Americans’ financial data at "grave risk."
"By seizing all financial data from all Americans who trade in the American exchanges, SEC arrogates surveillance powers and appropriates billions of dollars without a shred of Congressional authority — all while putting Americans’ savings and investments at grave and perpetual risk," said Peggy Little, NCLA senior litigation counsel.
"The Founders provided rock-solid protections in our Constitution to prevent just these autocratic and dangerous actions. This CAT must be ripped out, root and branch," she said.
[FoxNews] House Freedom Caucus takes issue with foreign aid package for not addressing southern border
Posted by: Skidmark ||
04/21/2024
07:12 ||
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#1
Tut, tut, stuff and nonsense. I would have to say publicly financed drag queen story hour for minors and near infants is much worse. How about physically mutilating prepubescent children? That's got to rate a special circle in Hell.
Let's not even get into the ocean of money they steal/launder/ and give to their minions.
Funding ANYTHING in the Ukraine is silly, why gripe about their border?
#3
Sad to see the funding pass. Money spent goes round and round. Weapons appear on the black market. Small amount will make it to Ukraine. Some items will take a year to be shipped to Ukraine. Its like having a trophy wife who requires repeated monies. Z will return again and again for funding.
[FoxNews] 'I would not let my wife or my kids walk down the streets of Houston at midnight under any circumstances,' Ray Hunt said.
Leaders of the Houston Police Officers' Union are sounding the alarm on the city's safety as criminal suspects walk the streets on bond while the police department battles officer shortages.
"I have never in my lifetime – and I'm a lifelong Houstonian – seen this many suspected murderers and capital murderers who are walking the streets of Houston out on multiple bonds," the union's executive director Ray Hunt told Fox News Digital.
"I would not let my wife or my kids walk down the streets of Houston at midnight under any circumstances," he continued. "It is not safe in major cities in 2024, and it's not safe here."
The warning comes as the Houston Police Department continues to struggle with recruiting and retaining officers, an issue plaguing departments across the nation.
"We're in a perfect storm right now," President Douglas Griffith said. "We had the George Floyd effect come down. We can't hire. We can't retain our officers. The people are leaving left and right."
"Who in the heck wants to be a police officer in 2024?" Hunt asked, "when every single thing that they're doing is going to be second-guessed by their body-worn camera that someone can watch three or four times to determine whether or not that officer made the right split-second decision. I don't know who would want to do that. I could not encourage any of my family to come be a police officer in 2024 with the situation that's going on."
According to Griffith, the Houston City Council was made aware of department shortages a decade ago, after a 2014 Sam Houston State University report revealed a shortage of 1,500 officers in the city.
"In 2014, it said if Houston was staffed like Chicago, we would have 9,602 sworn officers. At that time we had about 5,600 – 4,000 short. Now we have just over 5,000. We've already lost officers since then," Hunt said.
As a result of this shortage, "we will never be able to be able to investigate" every case, Griffith added.
"A survey of investigative division commanders revealed excessively high numbers of cases with leads that were not investigated in 2013 due to lack of personnel," Hunt continued. "This was 2014 they're writing this. For burglary and theft, nearly 15,000 cases were suspended – 3,000 assault cases in the homicide division, 3,000 hit-and-run cases for that year. They knew that. Everyone knew that we were shorthanded, and now everyone wants to say, 'Wow, these officers are lazy. They're not doing your job.' Completely untrue."
"This was presented to City Council at the time, this was presented to every person. And you can find the tapes on there where one of the council members says, 'Wow, y'all just put us on notice that we've got a serious staffing problem.'"
Griffith also called out the court system for "not doing their job."
"Their contention is that we can't hold somebody. We have to give everybody a bond, yes, the first time. Once they violate that bond, they can be held in jail until they go to court again. And we get people on six, seven, eight, nine bonds at one time. And that's a problem that we have to fix in the courts. And with the DA's office, you try to make sure that these public offenders can't be continued to roam the streets and victimize our citizens."
Hunt said suspects in Harris County, where Houston is located, may not go to court for five to six years. However, criminals in Montgomery County, just north of Houston, are held accountable.
"Crooks in this area know the boundary lines of Harris County and Montgomery County. They don't want to commit crimes in Montgomery County because they know they're going to be held responsible."
Last month, police in Austin, Texas described staffing shortages and longer 911-call response times in the aftermath of the city council's vote to defund the department in 2020.
Austin Police Association President Michael Bullock told Fox News Digital that a steady decline in public safety had put the city on the "brink of disaster." In February, a section of the city was notably left without a single police officer for a few hours on a Saturday.
#1
Fentanyl, COVID and the Jab did provide the desired population adjustment numbers. Known murderers and drug addicts have now been added to the mix. Additional wars, plagues, and pandemics are also in development.
#3
The smaller cities that surround Houston (and there are many) and the sheriff's department don't seem to be having a problem recruiting. Neither does the DPS (state police).
Maybe it has to do with management.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
04/21/2024 15:19
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#4
Was Houston ever a place to have your kids and wife walk the streets at midnight?
Posted by: Super Hose ||
04/21/2024 15:20
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#5
Only if they 'be doin' your bidness', SH.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
04/21/2024 16:58
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BLUF:
[PJ] The nature of hierarchy in marriage, I suspect, is biologically ordained, as expressed in the ancestral distinction between the spear and the distaff. The Old English word for man is hläford ("lord") and for lady, hläefdige (bread). The idea was that men rely on their strength and hunt for the larder. Women are concerned with nourishment and cook for the family. The male is, so to speak, the breadwinner; the female is the breadbaker. This is obviously not always the case but it remains a hoary cultural archetype — a distinction that is now being erased and overthrown, to nobody’s benefit. The failure of masculinity, of the spirit of captaincy or guardianship, or, to put it differently, the misalignment of traditional gender roles, is one of the major factors behind the increasingly common scourge of discord in married life.
When the spear/distaff relation is reversed, a rift will open up between partners. One thinks of the host in The Monk’s Prologue in Chaucer’s "The Canterbury Tales" whose hot-tempered wife, fuming at her husband, cries:
[Mises] Ludwig von Mises’s Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow has become quite popular recently. The Mises Book Store has sold out of its physical copies, and the PDF, which is available online for free, has seen over 50,000 downloads in the past few days.
This surge in interest in Mises’s ideas was started by UFC fighter Renato Moicano, who declared in a short post-fight victory speech, "I love America, I love the Constitution...I want to carry...guns. I love private property. Let me tell you something. If you care about your...country, read Ludwig von Mises and the six lessons of the Austrian economic school."
The "six lessons" he is referring to is Mises’s book, Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow, which was republished by our friends in Brazil under the title "As Seis Licões" ("The Six Lessons").
If you are interested in what Mises has to say in this book, which is a transcription of lectures he gave in Argentina in 1959, here’s a brief preview, which I hope inspires you to read the short book in full. As a side note, if you are an undergraduate student who is interested in these ideas, the Mises Institute’s next Mises Book Club is on this text (pure coincidence!).
Lecture One: Capitalism
Mises begins his first lecture with an overview of the development of capitalism out of feudalism. Businesses began "mass production to satisfy the needs of the masses" instead of focusing on producing luxury goods for the elite. These big businesses succeeded because they served the needs of a larger group of people, and their success wholly depended on their ability to give this mass of consumers what they wanted.
Despite the amazing and undeniable increases in standards of living, even for a growing population, capitalism had its detractors, including Karl Marx, who gave capitalism its name. Mises says that while Marx hated capitalism and that Marx dubbed it thusly as an attack on the system, the name is a good one
because it describes clearly the source of the great social improvements brought about by capitalism. Those improvements are the result of capital accumulation; they are based on the fact that people as a rule, do not consume everything they have produced, that they save—and invest—a part of it.
Prosperity is the result of providing for the future—more precisely it is the result of setting aside consumption today by saving and investing resources in production. Mises says that this principle explains why some countries are more prosperous than others. When it comes to economic growth, "there are no miracles." There is only "the application of the principles of the free market economy, of the methods of capitalism."
Lecture Two: Socialism
In the second lecture, Mises takes a closer look at Marx’s proposed system: socialism. Economic freedom means that people can choose their own careers and use their resources to accomplish their own ends. Economic freedom is the basis for all other freedoms. For example, when the government seizes whole industries, like that of the printing press, it determines what will be published and what won’t and the "freedom of the press disappears."
Mises acknowledges that there is no such thing as "perfect freedom" in a metaphysical sense. We must obey the laws of nature, especially if we intend to use and transform nature according to our ends. And even economic freedom means that there is a fundamental interdependence among individuals: "Freedom in society means that a man depends as much on other people as other people depend upon him." This is also true for big businesses and the entrepreneurs who lead them. The true "bosses" in the market economy are not those who shout orders to the workers, but the consumers.
Socialists despise the idea of consumer sovereignty because it means allowing mistakes. In their mind, the state should play the paternalistic role of deciding what is good for everyone. Thus Mises sees no difference between socialism and a system of slavery: "The slave must do what his superior orders him to do, but the free citizen—and this is what freedom means—is in a position to choose his own way of life." In capitalism, this freedom makes it possible for people to be born into poverty but then achieve great success as they provide for their fellow man. This kind of social mobility is impossible under systems like feudalism and socialism.
Mises ends this lecture with a short explanation of the economic calculation critique of socialism. When the private ownership of the means of production is prohibited, then economic calculation is made impossible. Without market prices for factors, we cannot economize production and provide for the needs of the masses, no matter who oversees the socialist planning board. The result is mass deprivation and chaos.
Lecture Three: Interventionism
Interventionism describes a situation in which the government "wants to interfere with market phenomena." Each intervention involves an abrogation of the consumer sovereignty Mises had explained in the two previous lectures.
The government wants to interfere in order to force businessmen to conduct their affairs in a different way than they would have chosen if they had obeyed only the consumers. Thus, all the measures of interventionism by the government are directed toward restricting the supremacy of consumers.
Mises gives an example of a price ceiling on milk. While those who enact such an intervention may intend to make milk more affordable for poorer families, there are many unintended consequences: increased demand, decreased supply, non-price rationing in the form of long queues at shops that sell milk, and, importantly, grounds for the government to intervene in new ways now that their initial intervention has not achieved its intended purpose. So, in Mises’s example, he traces through the new interventions, like government rationing, price controls for cattle food, price controls for luxury goods, and so on until the government has intervened in virtually every part of the economy, i.e., socialism.
After providing some historical examples of this process, Mises gives the big picture. Interventionism, as a "middle-of-the-road policy," is actually a road toward totalitarianism.
#1
In a nutshell: "What had taken place? What was the problem? What was it that caused the disintegration of an empire which, in every regard, had attained the highest civilization ever achieved before the eighteenth centuryin the history of mankind? The truth is that what destroyed this ancient civilization America was something similar, almost identical to the dangers that threaten our civilization today: on the one hand it was (government)interventionism, and on the other hand, inflation.
[IsraelTimes] Two days before Jewish holiday of freedom, protesters demand hostage deal, slam government; ’Instead of sitting at the Seder table, you should be sitting at the negotiating table’
Thousands across Israel rallied for the hostages’ release and against the government on Saturday night,
...only thousands? Usually they claim 100,00 or 200,000...
linking the plight of the hostages to the message of the quickly-approaching Passover holiday, set to begin Monday evening.
Just about everyone goes home for the big holiday dinner, except those who are about to be descended upon — it’s like Thanksgiving here.
Demonstrators grappled with how to mark the weeklong Jewish holiday, which commemorates freedom with the story of the ancient Israelites’ exodus from slavery in Egypt, while 129 hostages are still held captive by terror groups in the Gazoo ...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamaswith 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 since Hamas, a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",’s October 7 massacre.
"It is incomprehensible that we have come to this holiday that represents freedom, and they [the hostages] aren’t here," said Tom Barkai, an organizer with the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, to a solemn crowd in Jerusalem’s Gay Paree Square next to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official residence.
Hostage families protests in Tel Aviv, Haifa and dozens of other cities across the country echoed similar themes. In Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, many anti-government protesters merged with the Hostages Families Forum demonstrations, and vice versa, later in the night.
Recent weeks have seen an increasing convergence between the protests of the families and the mass anti-government demonstrations that were a weekly event in the months before October 7. Some of the families accuse Netanyahu of blocking a deal for political reasons.
In Jerusalem, hundreds convened outside the prime minister’s official residence around an hour after Shabbat’s end to demand a hostage deal.
Although speeches at weekly hostages’ rallies in Jerusalem tend to take a more critical tone towards Israel’s leadership than those in Tel Aviv, this particular evening took a turn when one of the speakers unequivocally called for the government’s ouster.
"The time for this government has run out, and they need to go," said Eyal Eshel, whose 19-year-old daughter Roni Eshel, an IDF lookout, was killed on the Gaza border during Hamas’s onslaught on October 7. "This is the time for new leadership."
The crowd met Eshel’s comments with enthusiastic agreement, chanting "shame" and demanding the prime minister’s resignation.
At the front of the march, protesters held a large banner with an excerpt from the hagaddah: "He [God] took us out from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, from mourning to festival, from darkness to a great light, and from enslavement to redemption." Under the quote in bold, black letters, read the words, "Deal now!"
After the speeches ended, protesters in Jerusalem marched from Gay Paree Square to the President’s Residence for an anti-government protest organized by the group Safeguarding our Shared Home.
At an anti-government protest in Tel Aviv’s Democracy Square, Hagit and Ruby Chen, parents of slain IDF soldier Itay Chen, said that they had received a call from US President Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. The very model of probity, except maybe for abandoning Afghanistan... after being notified last month that their son was killed on October 7 and his body held in Gaza, but they were never contacted by Netanyahu.
The protesters later congregated with the hostage families rally on Begin Street, and after organizers read out the names of all captives who remain the Gaza Strip, the unified group continued to march through some of Tel Aviv’s most bustling streets, urging bar-goers to join the demonstration.
Many protesters carried signs referencing the Passover Haggadah and the Four Questions, with one sign that read, "How is this government different from all others?"
Police dispersed the marchers at Dizengoff Center mall with light force, but made no arrests and issued no fines throughout the relatively calm night.
Further north, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid addressed an anti-government rally in Haifa on Saturday night, calling the government "a disaster that happened to the country."
The opposition leader added that he’s been asked why he has not joined the government amid the war and explained that he wants to get rid of the government rather than strengthen it.
"This is not the best that Israel can offer its citizens," he continued. "For the hostages, we need elections now."
In light of the upcoming Passover holiday, hostage rallies were held in 55 cities and towns across the country this week, all planned by the Families Forum.
At a protest outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private residence in Caesarea, a speaker lamented that nothing feels like a holiday right now, and "certainly not a festival of freedom, when 133 of our brothers and sisters have spent more than six months in the tunnels of Gaza where they are assaulted, starved and raped."
In Kfar Saba, speakers urged protesters to keep coming out to demonstrate, even during the Passover vacation. Demonstrators also gathered en masse in Beersheba, Rehovot, Ra’anana, Hod Hasharon, near Netanya and elsewhere.
Hamas’ politburo head Ismail Haniyeh met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at his residence in Istanbul on Saturday. The meeting, which took place against the backdrop of reports that Hamas's political leadership is considering leaving Doha was attended by other senior Hamas officials, including Khaled Mashal. Told ye
Posted by: Grom the Reflective ||
04/21/2024
01:51 ||
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Hezbollah crows about shelling Israeli targets here. Happily they got some martyrs out of it, so it’s a win-win.
[IsraelTimes] Army says it targeted members of the terror group throughout the day
At least three members of the Hezbollah terror group were killed in an Israeli Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... in southern Lebanon Hezbollahstan ...In 2020 Hezbollah blew up a considerable portion of Beirut and many of its inhabitants when its ammonium nitrate facility exploded. They blamed it on... somebody else. It wasn't them though. Trust them on that. And it ain't never coming to trial... on Saturday, as skirmishes on the border continued.
The Israel Defense Forces said it had carried out strikes on Hezbollah operatives in Ayta ash-Shab and Kfar Kila in the morning hours, after they were spotted entering sites belonging to the terror group.
Later in the day, the IDF said reservists of the Etzioni Brigade spotted several more Hezbollah operatives at one of the group’s sites in Jebbayn before fighter jets struck the building. Hezbollah announced that three of its members were killed in the strike in Jebbayn.
Their deaths brought the terror group’s toll amid the war in the Gazoo ...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamaswith 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 to 285.
Since October 8, Hezbollah has attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a daily basis with rockets, drones, anti-tank missiles and other means, saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there.
Sirens sounded in northern Israel throughout Saturday, warning of rocket attacks and possible drone infiltrations, some of which were later deemed to be false alarms.
At least one projectile fired from Lebanon hit a home in the largely evacuated town of Metula. There were no reports of injuries.
The terror group grabbed credit for at least nine separate attacks Saturday.
The latest significant attack was on Wednesday, when 14 soldiers and four civilians were maimed as an explosive drone fired from Lebanon struck a community center in the northern border town of Arab al-Aramshe.
[IsraelTimes] Unconfirmed reports claim clashes started when residents of nearby settlement threw rocks at Palestinian villagers near Nablus; unclear whether fire came from troops or settlers
An ambulance driver was killed in the West Bank on Saturday on his way to evacuate people maimed during an alleged violent mostly peaceful attack by residents of nearby settlements, according to the Paleostinian Authority health ministry.
Hebrew media reported that a group of settlers had arrived at the Paleostinian town of As-Sawiya near the settlement of Eli on Saturday afternoon and began throwing stones at Paleostinians who retaliated by doing the same.
Shortly after the festivities began, Israel Defense Forces troops arrived and began firing at the rioters. Some reports in Hebrew media said that the 50-year-old ambulance driver was killed by IDF fire, while other said that he was shot by armed settlers.
There was no immediate comment on the incident from the military.
A resident of As-Sawiya told Haaretz that the army only arrived at the scene after a group of Paleostinian residents chased the settlers away. He said that the soldiers and settlers stood together on a hill some 500 meters from the Paleostinians when the troops opened fire.
"Nothing like this has ever happened before where settlers attack [us] and the soldiers help them," the man was quoted as saying. "The police showed up about an hour later, and if an Israeli had been injured, they would have shown up within a second."
The PA health ministry said the driver, named as Muhammad Awad, was killed by Israeli gunfire as he was making his way to transport people injured during the attack. A medic who was with the driver when he was shot claimed that he was shot by Israeli soldiers.
Settler violence in the West Bank spiked in the last week after the body of 14-year-old Benjamin Achimeir was found last weekend after he had gone missing. Security forces said he had been murdered in a terror attack.
Following the discovery of Achimeir’s body, Jewish settlers entered the village of al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah, and set houses and cars ablaze. Paleostinian medics said one man was killed and 25 others were maimed in the rampage.
Violent incidents continued throughout the week with another two Paleostinians killed in a confrontation with settlers on Monday evening. Paleostinian authorities and the IDF said the two victims had been shot by settlers.
Incidents of vandalism against Paleostinians and Israeli security forces are commonly referred to as "price tag" attacks, with perpetrators calling them retaliation for Paleostinian violence or government policies seen as hostile to the settler movement.
Arrests of perpetrators are exceedingly rare and rights groups lament that convictions are even more unusual, with the majority of charges in such cases being dropped.
The week’s violence culminated in the US announcement of a third round of sanctions against settler individuals including Benzi Gopstein — leader of the murderous Moslem right-wing Lehava group and a close ally of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.
Under Gopstein’s leadership, Lehava and its members have been involved in acts or threats of violence against Paleostinians, often targeting sensitive or volatile areas.
Two entities, the Mount Hebron Fund and Shlom Asiraich, were also targeted for their roles in establishing fundraising campaigns on behalf of Yinon Levi and David Chai Chasdai, two recently US-designated gunnies who engaged in violent mostly peaceful activities targeting Paleostinians and Israeli peace activist muppets in the West Bank.
Settler violence spiked after the October 7 massacre carried out by the Hamas, a regional Iranian catspaw, terror group in southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 253 were taken hostage, but violence was already on the rise before then, according to watchdogs.
Since October 7, troops have arrested some 3,700 wanted Paleostinians across the West Bank, including more than 1,600 affiliated with Hamas. According to the Paleostinian Authority health ministry, more than 450 West Bank Paleostinians have been killed in that time.
In the same period, at least 13 Israelis, among them two members of security forces, have been killed by Paleostinians in the West Bank, according to an Israeli tally.
[IsraelTimes] Report says Blinken to target Netzah Yehuda for violence against West Bank Paleostinians; Ben Gvir: I’ll absorb battalion into police; unit was moved north in 2020 after multiple incidents
The Biden administration (aka the Wilmington comorra) ...the collection of boodlers, grifters, hangers-on, and self-proclaimed experts affiliated with the Biden Crime Family. Entrusted with an entire nation as the result of a suspicious election, they set about happily implementing stuff they absorbed in college, all of which blew up and splattered the rest of us... is slated to announce sanctions against the IDF’s Netzah Yehuda battalion for alleged human rights ...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless... abuses against Paleostinians in the West Bank, the Axios news site reported on Saturday. It would be the first time the US has ever taken such a step.
The battalion has been at the center of several controversies in the past connected to right-wing extremism and violence against Paleostinians, notably including the 2022 death of Omar As’ad, a 78-year-old Paleostinian-American who died after being detained, handcuffed, blindfolded, and later abandoned in near-freezing conditions by soldiers of the battalion.
Israel moved the unit out of the West Bank in December 2022 — though it denied it did so due to soldiers’ behavior — and it has since served mostly in the country’s north.
The reported US plan drew a scathing response from Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"The IDF must not be sanctioned!" he wrote on X. "I’ve been working in recent weeks against the sanctioning of Israeli citizens, including in my conversations with the American administration.
"At a time when our soldiers are fighting terrorist monsters, the intention to issue sanctions against a unit in the IDF is the height of absurdity and a moral low," he added, committing to fight the move.
Centrist war cabinet Minister Benny Gantz joined the criticism, saying the infantry unit was "an integral part of the IDF" and was bound by military and international law. He added that Israel has "strong and independent" courts capable of dealing with alleged violations.
"We have great respect for our American friends, but imposing sanctions on the unit is a dangerous precedent and sends the wrong message to our shared enemies at a time of war," Gantz said, while pledging to "take action so this decision does not pass."
The expressions of surprise and anger in Israel came shortly after leaders voiced profound gratitude to the US after the US House passed a major military aid package for the Jewish state.
Citing unnamed American sources, the Axios report said the sanctions would bar the transfer of US weapons to the largely ultra-Orthodox infantry unit and prevent its soldiers from training with US forces or taking part in any activities with US funding, under the Leahy Laws.
Authored by then-senator Patrick Leahy ...Democrat Senator-for-Life from Vermont, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, source of more leaks than a plumber could keep up with... in the late 1990s, the laws prohibit providing military assistance to individuals or security force units that commit gross violations of human rights and have not been brought to justice.
One of the sources was quoted saying that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had decided not to sanction other military and police units that the administration was investigating, as it had seen adjustments in their conduct.
An administration official told the news site that the decision to sanction Netzah Yehuda was based on research done before October 7 that examined incidents in the West Bank.
The report came days after ProPublica said a State Department panel recommended that Blinken sanction several Israeli units for alleged rights abuses, including Netzah Yehuda.
Blinken himself said Friday that he had made "determinations" regarding accusations that Israeli forces had violated the Leahy Laws.
Asked at a news conference in Italia about reports that the State Department has recommended the cutting off of military aid to certain Israeli units over possible human rights violations in the West Bank, Blinken did not outright confirm the reports, but promised results very soon.
"I think you’re referring to the so-called Leahy Law and our work under that," he responds. "So this is a very important law. And it’s one that we apply across the board. And when we’re doing these investigations, these inquiries, it’s something that takes time. That has to be done very carefully, both in collecting the facts and analyzing them.
"And that’s exactly what we’ve done. And I think it’s fair to say that you’ll see results very soon. I made determinations. You can expect to see them in the days ahead," Blinken said, without elaborating.
Netzah Yehuda was created so that ultra-Orthodox and other religious soldiers can serve without feeling they are compromising their beliefs. The soldiers do not interact with female troops to the same extent as other servicemen and are given additional time for prayer and religious study.
Members of the unit have been involved in multiple controversial and violent mostly peaceful incidents and have also been convicted in the past of torturing and abusing Paleostinian prisoners.
Since the Israel-Hamas, the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®, war began on October 7, the US has issued three rounds of sanctions against settler individuals for violence against Paleostinians. The latest round was issued on Friday and included the leader of the far-right group Lehava, Benzi Gopstein, who is a close ally of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.
Ben Gvir said Saturday that imposing "sanctions on our soldiers is a red line."
Describing the Axios report as "extremely grave," Ben Gvir stated that he "expects Defense Minister Yoav Gallant not to submit to American dictates" and that the members of Netzah Yehuda "must be fully supported."
"If there is not anybody at the Defense Ministry who will back up the battalion as required, I will ask to absorb them into the Israel Police and the Ministry of National Security," continued Ben Gvir, who added that he would be willing to integrate the battalion into the Border Police.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said imposing sanctions "while Israel is fighting for its existence is utter madness."
"This is part of a planned move to force the State of Israel to agree to the establishment of a Paleostinian state and to forsake Israel’s security," Smotrich charged in a post on X.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Korrespondent] The Ukrainian Armed Forces are holding back Russian troops in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Over the course of 24 hours, Defense Force aviation and missile forces carried out strikes on nine areas where Russian personnel were concentrated.
During the current day, 91 military clashes took place at the front. Most of the attacks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were repulsed in three eastern directions, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported in the evening report on Saturday, May 20.
Thus, the Russian invaders carried out 14 missile and 48 air strikes, carried out 61 shelling from MLRS on the positions of Ukrainian troops and populated areas.
The Russians did not carry out offensive actions in the Kupyansk direction, but carried out an air strike in the area of the settlement of Sinkovka, Kharkov region.
About 15 settlements came under artillery and mortar fire, in particular, Stepnaya Novoselovka, Ivanovka, Kotlyarovka in the Kharkov region.
In the Liman direction, the Defense Forces repelled nine attacks in the area of the village of Terny, Donetsk region, where the enemy tried to break through the defenses of Ukrainian troops.
The Russians also carried out airstrikes in the areas of the settlements of Novosadovo and Yampolevka in the Donetsk region. More than 10 settlements were damaged by artillery and mortar shelling, including Nevskoye in the Lugansk region and Terny and Torskoye in the Donetsk region.
In the Bakhmut direction, Ukrainian soldiers repelled 25 attacks in the areas of Belogorivka settlements, Luhansk region; Verkhnekamennoye, Spornoe, Klishchievka, Ivanovskoye, Novy Donetsk region, where the enemy tried to improve the tactical situation.
The Russians also carried out air strikes in the areas of Chasov Yar and New York in the Donetsk region. More than 10 settlements came under artillery and mortar fire, including Grigorovka, Kalinovka, Chasov Yar in the Donetsk region.
In the Avdeevsky direction, the Defense Forces repelled 18 attacks in the areas of the settlements of Semenovka, Novokalinovo, Ocheretino, Berdychi, Umanskoye, Yasnobrodovka in the Donetsk region, where the enemy, with the support of aviation, tried to oust Ukrainian units from their occupied lines.
The Russian army also carried out airstrikes in the areas of the settlements of Novobakhmutovka, Alexandropol, Solovyevo and Novoaleksandrovka in the Donetsk region. About 15 settlements were subjected to artillery and mortar shelling.
In the Novopavlovsk direction, the Defense Forces continued to contain the enemy in the areas of the settlements of Georgievka, Novomikhailovka, Vodyanoye and Urozhaynoye in the Donetsk region, where the enemy, with the support of aviation, tried to break through the defenses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces 17 times.
The enemy also carried out airstrikes in the areas of the settlements of Krasnogorovka, Shakhterskoye and Bolshaya Novoselka. More than 10 settlements came under artillery and mortar fire, including Paraskovyevka, Konstantinovka, and Ugledar.
In the Orekhovsky direction, the Russians, with the support of aviation, once attacked the positions of Ukrainian defenders in the Staromayorskoye area of the Donetsk region. Air strikes were carried out in the areas of the settlements of Malaya Tokmachka and Robotino, Zaporozhye region.
About 20 settlements were subjected to artillery and mortar shelling, including Stepnoe, Shcherbaki, Pyatikhatki in the Zaporozhye region.
In the Kherson direction, the enemy did not abandon his intention to oust Ukrainian units from the bridgeheads on the left bank of the Dnieper and made three unsuccessful attacks on the positions of Ukrainian troops in the area of the village of Krynki.
About 20 settlements were subjected to artillery and mortar shelling, including Tyaginka, Ivanovka, Novotyaginka, Ponyatovka, Sadovoe, Olgovka, Nikolaevka, Huge in the Kherson region and the city of Kherson.
During the day, Defense Forces aircraft carried out strikes on eight areas where Russian personnel were concentrated.
Units of the missile forces inflicted defeat on the area of concentration of personnel, the composition of ammunition, air defense equipment, and the area of concentration of weapons and military equipment of the Russian Army.
Let us remind you that over the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian Armed Forces destroyed 750 Russian aggressors. The total number of losses of the Russian army since the beginning of the invasion is approaching 460 thousand military personnel.
[IsraelTimes] NYT says attack was ’calibrated’ to show Israel’s capability to dodge Iran’s air defenses, make Tehran ’think twice’ before another assault; Iran’s FM claims it merely faced ’toys’
The alleged Israeli strike overnight Thursday-Friday on Iranian air defenses near the Natanz nuclear site used a high-tech missile that was able to evade Iran’s radar systems, in a move "calibrated to make Iran ...Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979... think twice" before launching another direct attack on Israel, The New York Times
... which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... reported on Saturday.
Two unnamed Western officials cited by the newspaper said the missile aimed to show Tehran that Israel is able to dodge and neutralize its defenses.
Two Iranian officials said the strike hit a Russian-made S-300 air defense system. They told the newspaper that Iran had not detected intrusions into its airspace from drones, missiles or aircraft.
The newspaper said the missile was from a warplane fired "far from Israeli or Iranian airspace."
The report also said that neither the plane nor the missile entered Jordanian airspace — a calculated move to keep Amman out of any potential ramifications for the reprisal strike, after it helped shoot down some of the hundreds of drones and missiles fired by Iran at Israel last weekend.
Satellite imagery seen by the Times of Israel showed damage to the radar of an S-300 system at the Eighth Shekari Air Base in Isfahan, said to be part of an array defending the nearby top-secret Natanz nuclear site. The imagery was not immediately permitted for publication, per the policy of the agency that took the photo.
Additional synthetic aperture radar satellite images taken Friday also showed evidence that the radar site was targeted.
The New York Times said the strike was deliberately designed to send a message on how a wider attack could look, with Israel able to penetrate Iranian defenses undetected.
US defense officials also told The New York Times that there was concern the precedent set by the nations’ direct exchanges of blows this week could encourage further rounds of violence in the future.
Other effects could be an Iranian effort to better protect its nuclear assets and make them harder to attack, as well a potential push to move weaponry closer to Israel in case of another confrontation, experts told the paper.
US media reported Friday that the alleged Israeli strike in Iran went beyond the scope of several small drones described by Tehran. ABC news was the first to report that the air defenses at Isfahan were part of an array defending the nearby top-secret Natanz site.
Citing "senior US military sources," Fox News reported that the target of the strike was a military base in Isfahan, and not the heavily fortified nuclear facilities themselves, which lie some 100 kilometers (62 miles) to the north of the city, largely buried under a mountain.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, in New York to attend a United Nations ...an organization which on balance has done more bad than good, with the good not done well and the bad done thoroughly... Security Council meeting on the Middle East, likened the strike on Friday to child’s play.
Speaking to NBC News through a translator, Amir-Abdollahian said the drones had taken off from inside Iran and flew for a few hundred meters before being downed.
"What happened last night was no attack," said Amir-Abdollahian. "It was the flight of two or three quad-copters, which are at the level of toys that our children use in Iran."
However, some people are alive only because it's illegal to kill them... the reports that Israel had fired at least one missile appear to correlate with debris found in Iraq in the morning after residents of Baghdad reported hearing sounds of explosions.
Images showed what appeared to be parts of a two-stage standoff air-to-surface missile near Latifiya, southwest of Baghdad, which would have fallen away after the missile launch, although this remains unconfirmed.
Israel has several types of these munitions available for its air force, raising the possibility it was fired as part of the attack.
Also, around the time of the incident in Iran, Syria’s state-run SANA news agency quoted a military statement saying Israel carried out a missile strike targeting a southern air defense unit and causing damage. The Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor of unclear funding, said the strike hit a military radar for government forces.
That area of Syria is directly west of Isfahan, some 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) away and east of Israel, and could provide an indication of the route taken by Israeli jets.
The facility at Isfahan operates three small Chinese-supplied research reactors, as well as handling fuel production and other activities for Iran’s nuclear program.
The deeply fortified underground Natanz enrichment site, meanwhile, has been repeatedly targeted by suspected Israeli sabotage attacks.
Iran’s nuclear program has rapidly advanced to producing enriched uranium at nearly weapons-grade levels since the collapse of its atomic deal with world powers, after then-US president Donald Trump ...His ancestors didn't own any slaves... withdrew America from the accord in 2018.
And so we know more than the journalists of the New York Times — see how easy it is? ;-)
The missile used in the alleged Israeli attack on a military base near the Iranian city of Isfahan overnight Thursday-Friday was a locally-developed air-to-surface missile dubbed The Rampage, according to a Hebrew media report.
The Kan broadcaster reports that The Rampage was identified from photos and also matches the extent of the damage caused in the attack.
The 4.7-meter (15-foot) rocket can also travel at supersonic speed, making it difficult to detect and intercept using air defense systems such as the Iron Dome.
The Rampage, which weighs over half a ton and was unveiled in 2018, was designed to penetrate into and destroy protected areas, like bunkers, according to its manufacturers, Israeli Military Industries Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries.
[SlayNews] Well, as more and more Real Science data is released and reviewed about the Clot-Shot. It is clear the public was likely lied to, and the Clot-Shot may end up killing more than the C-19 did Virus itself.
Cancer Doctor Issues Urgent Warning
The mRNA COVID-19 shots “should be completely banned! If they’re going to be used for anything, it has to be what they are, gene therapies.”
Prof. Angus Dalgleish says there is a “fundamental flaw” with COVID-19 shots, and the flaw is that… pic.twitter.com/MMSOQq9qtF
Direct Translation via Google Translate Edited.
[KavkazUzel] Employees of the colonies in Dagestan control the entry into their territory of even such items as food, not to mention components for the manufacture of explosives. The security forces could have opened a case about the jamaat in the colony in order to improve the performance of their work after the terrorist attack in Crocus City Hall, noted human rights activists interviewed by the Caucasian Knot.
As the "Caucasian Knot" reported, on April 11 it became known that three residents of Dagestan were arrested in connection with a terrorist community. While serving time in a colony, they united into an illegal armed group with terrorist purposes and were preparing attacks on security forces, the Investigative Committee said.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Police shot dead a pedophile who pulled a gun after he opened a hotel door expecting to be having a sick threesome with two young girls.
Instead of child victims aged seven and 11, the 67-year-old was confronted by Seattle Police officers waiting to arrest him at the DoubleTree Suites.
Bodycam footage showed the man, wearing a jacket and carrying a bag, arrive at 3.13pm on Wednesday and knock on the door.
He immediately pulled the gun before police could greet him, and the first officer lunged at the weapon to wrestle it from his grasp.
The gun went off once in the struggle, grazing one of the officers' legs, before another cop shot the pedophile twice and he fell to the ground.
Three officers fired well over a dozen rounds into the man as he lay on the ground, and he was later pronounced dead at the scene.
Seattle Police Department Chief Adrian Diaz said internet crimes against children increased 67 per cent from 2022 to 2023.
The officers were with the Washington State Internet Crimes Against Children, whose colleagues had snared the pedophile in an online sting.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/21/2024 10:22
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#5
I don’t see dumping your mag while a perp is down as good police work. In this case it was multiple mag dumps. Like the FBI , it’s not the cops job to decide who dies.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Denis Davydov
[REGNUM] The fate of the cheeky little boy in round glasses, who cheerfully praised the Azov children's patriotic camp, turned out to be quite logical. He grew up and died at the age of 19 near Chasovoy Yar, which was reported by all the news feeds, look, they say, what such an upbringing leads to. But behind the story of one boy there is a huge problem: there are thousands of them. “National-patriotic education of youth” in Ukraine gave results, growing both the striking force of the Maidan, and the corps of “activists” supervising fellow citizens and bringing them to obedience, and motivated soldiers working as “glue” for the unprincipled masses.
[Rudaw] The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the occupiers of Greek Asia Minor... will end its latest aerial military operation against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the Kurdistan Region in the summer, an advisor at the Ottoman Turkish defense ministry said on Thursday.
Operation Claw-Lock was launched by Turkey on April 18, 2022 with the goal of targeting PKK positions in the Metina, Zap, Avashin, and Basyan areas in northern Duhok province along the Ottoman Turkish border.
"The lock in Claw-Lock will be closed this summer," Zeki Akturk, Press and Public Relations Advisor at the Ottoman Turkish defense ministry, told news hounds on Thursday.
He added that "rapid operations" against the Kurdish group will continue in the Region.
Turkey’s Claw-Lock Operation is part of a series of military offensives that started in 2019 against the PKK in northern Duhok province to eradicate the group in its bases in the Kurdistan Region’s mountains. Ottoman Turkish forces have built dozens of outposts within the Kurdistan Region’s borders during its operations.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
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[Rudaw] Authorities in the Kurdistan Region abruptly ceased issuing visas to Syrian passport holders, with Syrians lamenting the impact of the decision on their livelihoods.
Mohammed, who used to reside in Damascus, arrived in Erbil on March 27th of this year. Shortly after his arrival, a decision was made to halt visa issuance to Syrian passport holders. Consequently, he was unable to secure residency so he had to return to Syria.
"I came here to work, and my trip cost me a total of 20 million Syrian pounds including visa and airplane ticket. 20 million [Syrian pounds] is not easy to get in Syria. My salary is a million in a [month]," Mohammed told Rudaw on Sunday.
"I borrowed money and sold everything I owned to work here, and I said to myself that the debt could be compensated and paid off. I came here but two days after I arrived here the decision was made that no visas would be issued [to Syrians]. What will I do now?" said Mohammad.
The Kurdistan Regional Government announced the decision to cease the issuance of visas to Syrian passport holders, starting from March 29th.
Hence, Syrian nationals who arrived in the Kurdistan Region shortly before this announcement are ineligible to apply for residency in the Region and must depart within a month.
The decision excludes individuals with residency status in the United States, Canada, and Europe, who are eligible to acquire a tourism visa for only 30 days.
Iraq hosts around 270,000 Syrian refugees, over 90 percent of whom reside in the Kurdistan Region, according to data from the UN refugee agency. A large portion of this number are civilians who were forced to flee their homes following the 2011 Syrian civil war.
Job prospects are very limited for Syrian refugees and asylum seekers in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, with most resorting to low-paying jobs to make ends meet.
That’s one way to reduce the refugee/Moslem colonist population....
[Rudaw] A former Syrian regime general is set to appear before a court in Stockholm on Monday for his alleged involvement in war crimes committed by Bashir al-Assad’s regime during the Syrian civil war, making him the highest-ranking Syrian military official to be tried in Europa ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... yet.
Mohammed Hamo, 65-year-old former Syrian brigadier general, has been accused of "aiding and abetting" war crimes during the Syrian civil war, by contributing "action and advice" to the Syrian army, according to his charge sheet.
The trial is set to last until May and could result in a life sentence for Hamo. The charges brought against the former general concern the period of January 1 to July 20, 2012.
In a landmark trial in January 2022, a German court found a Syrian secret intelligence officer of Assad’s regime guilty of torture, sexual violence, and 27 murders at the notorious Branch 251 prison in Damascus, sentencing him to life in prison.
The same court had convicted a former member of Syria’s secret police of accessory to crimes against humanity in 2021, sentencing him to four and a half years in prison. The case was the first international trial against a Syrian official over crimes committed during the brutal civil war.
The UN top court in November ruled that the Syrian regime must halt its torture campaign and preserve all evidence related to acts of torture, in what is its first legal proceeding on the Syrian civil war.
Syrians rose up against the regime of Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Oppressor of the Syrians and the Lebs... in March 2011, leading to a full-scale civil war that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and has left millions more in need of dire humanitarian assistance.
Over 13 million Syrians, half the country’s prewar population, have been displaced since the start of the civil war, more than six million of which are refugees who have fled the war-torn country, according to UN figures.
Except for chemical weapons and nuclear bomb development, is Iraq known for weapons manufacturing, or are they as inshallah with that as with so much else?
[Rudaw] Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani
on Tuesday received a delegation from General Dynamics at his residence in Washington, focusing on cooperation with the American company to rebuild Iraq’s military capabilities, according to a statement from Sudani’s office.
"The meeting focused on cooperation with the company as part of the government's efforts to rebuild Iraq's military capabilities, specifically in providing tanks and armored vehicles," read the statement.
"Discussions also covered collaboration on establishing a major workshop for the maintenance and upgrading of tanks to suit the Iraqi terrain and climate conditions. Additionally, an agreement was reached to launch a series of initiatives with General Dynamics, as part of the government's plans to develop and support the military institution with various types of modern weapons," it added.
Sudani is heading a top Iraqi delegation to the US. He has met with US President Joe The Big Guy Biden
...46th president of the U.S. The very model of probity. He sez he had an uncle who was eaten by cannibals...
and other American officials since his arrival in the country on Saturday.
Biden and Sudani on Monday stressed their commitment for comprehensive bilateral cooperation in accordance with the Strategic Framework Agreement, including political, economic, and security cooperation, according to a joint statement released following the meeting.
Sudani on Tuesday also received the US Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, at his residence in Washington.
"During the meeting, relations between the two countries were discussed, and the possibility of cooperation and benefiting from the expertise of the US Department of Homeland Security in the areas of securing borders, combating drugs and drug trafficking, and modern technology related to their pursuit and detection, as well as training areas," read a statement from Sudani’s office.
[ShabelleMedia] In a recent announcement, Galmudug ...a semiautonomous region in central Somalia, bordering Puntland on the north. Galmudug is not trying to obtain international recognition as a separate nation, but rather considers itself autonomous within the larger Somali federalism, for what that's worth... ’s Minister of Information, Abshir Abdi Shikow, revealed that the al-Shabaab ...... the personification of Somali state failure... group is now severely depleted within the state’s territories.
The Minister attributed this development to the Galmudug administration’s concerted efforts to liberate its regions from the control of al-Shabaab militias, which have been a source of turmoil for the residents of Galmudug for over a decade.
For years, the al-Shabaab group has been responsible for numerous violent mostly peaceful attacks and acts of terror in Somalia and its neighboring countries. The group’s presence in Galmudug has significantly impacted the region, causing widespread fear and instability among the local population.
The Galmudug administration’s efforts to combat the al-Shabaab threat have been multi-faceted, involving increased security measures, intelligence gathering, and the strengthening of local and regional partnerships. These efforts have not only weakened the group’s grip on the region but have also provided a sense of hope and security to the people of Galmudug.
As the al-Shabaab group continues to lose its foothold in Galmudug, it is hoped that this development will pave the way for a more peaceful and prosperous future for the state and its people.
However, a woman is only as old as she admits... the ongoing threat of terrorism in Somalia and the Horn of Africa region remains a concern, and it will be essential for the international community to continue supporting the efforts of the Galmudug administration and other regional governments in their fight against extremism and terrorism.
[IsraelTimes] Some two weeks after the Israel Defense Forces withdrew all of its maneuvering ground forces from 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 an iron fist by Hamaswith 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 a day after photos of Paleostinians enjoying the beach caused a buzz in Hebrew media, reports point to signs of life returning to normal in areas including the north of the Strip, Gaza City, and the southern city of Khan Younis.
The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli defense Ministry unit responsible for liaising with the Paleostinians, shares a post showing market scenes in northern Gaza.
Photos from Gaza markets show stalls with a variety of vegetables in stock including tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, onions, along with staples such as eggs, spices and flour.
Channel 12 quotes Gaza photographer Ayman Amriti as saying that the price of a 25-kilogram (55-pound) sack of flour has come down from NIS 1,800 ($475) at the peak of the war to NIS 95 ($25) — though most people are struggling financially.
A carton of 30 eggs is reportedly now being sold in Gaza for NIS 38 ($10), down from NIS 10 ($2.50) per egg a month ago.
The Channel 12 report adds that meat, snacks, and watermelon is also available in Gaza.
COGAT said earlier this week that 23 bakeries currently operating in Gaza are producing some three million pita breads every day.
#12
I still think it's a poorly written / unclear sentence.
Yet another example of journalistic numerical bullshit. It is common to see mixed comparisons, like between a percentage and a count. Example: last year's murder rate in Big City was 17 per 100,000. This year, 43 people have died.
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin
[ColonelCassad] The United States confirmed that it was beginning to withdraw troops from Niger under pressure from local authorities, who, following the French, began to expel the Americans. Previously, the United States tried to stay in Niger by distancing itself from the French and concluding new agreements with the military government. But a series of mistakes by the State Department accelerated the process - during the last negotiations, representatives of the State Department tried to put pressure on the military and threaten them, after which they simply sent the Americans into the woods and demanded that they leave the country.
This situation is of greatest interest from the point of view of control over Africa’s largest drone base in Agadez, which also has a long runway to accommodate heavy military transport aircraft. It is a strategic asset of the U.S. Army Africa Command. Taking into account the entry into Niger of the Russian military "African Korps", in the future, it would be very interesting to see their appearance in Agadez and the inclusion of this base in the Russian logistics network.
PS. It is also worth noting that in neighboring Chad, authorities also began to demand that the American air base be stopped and that American troops leave the country. Decolonization processes continue.
“The United States informed Niger that it would withdraw 1,000 American troops in the coming months,” the journalist said.
Reuters, citing an informed source, writes that during a meeting on April 19, Deputy Head of the State Department Kurt Campbell and the Prime Minister of Niger reached an agreement on the withdrawal of US troops.
Earlier, IA Regnum reported that in March, the military that seized power in Niger broke the bilateral military agreement with the United States, which allowed Pentagon representatives and American military personnel to be in the country. The official reason for this step was Washington’s violation of diplomatic protocol, since the American side did not inform Niamey about one of the recent visits of its delegation.
There is an American drone base in the north of Niger; in December 2023, there were about 1,100 American troops in the country.
In the summer of 2023, in Niger, a group of military members of the presidential guard rebelled and announced the removal of President Mohamed Bazoum from power. To govern the country, the National Council for the Salvation of the Motherland was formed, headed by the commander of the Tchiani Guard.
On 16 September 2023, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger announced the creation of the Alliance of Sahel States. This association appeared to organize collective security in the region.
At the end of January, all three countries jointly decided to withdraw from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) as quickly as possible. The authorities of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger explained this step by saying that the organization, in their opinion, is under the influence of foreign powers.
Even more from regnum.ru SVR veteran: the Americans were actually “surrounded” by the Niger authorities at their base
Niger's new authorities have effectively cut off logistics for American troops in the country, forcing the United States to begin scaling back its presence. Veteran of the Foreign Intelligence Service Lev Korolkov told IA Regnum about this, commenting on the NYT publication about the imminent withdrawal of thousands of American troops from the African country.
“Americans used to feel very good there. But for almost a month and a half now they have been sitting in such an unofficial blockade. They were practically surrounded. Including in terms of servicing drones. They could neither accept new devices nor send equipment in need of repair for repair. And these are powerful drones that allowed the Americans to control almost all of central Africa and even the Middle East. Find out what is happening where. Who is moving, where is moving. But the worst thing for them is the loss of the drone if it is intercepted. Local authorities cannot completely block the base. But in fact, the Americans' hands were tied. So the situation is already hot for them, and they are forced to leave,” the expert said.
The reason why the United States missed such a significant blow in this strategically important region, according to the expert, is simple. The Central Intelligence Agency, he said, is also not omnipotent. The department simply did not have time to react to the rapid development of the situation in Niger and prevent the coup that occurred last year.
“In Washington they thought they had everything covered. That money decides everything. The United States well “packed” the previous authorities in Niger with money, but frankly “missed” the events. Everything happened unexpectedly for them. Of course, I have respect for the American intelligence services. In general, one should not underestimate the enemy, one must respect him. But then they were outplayed. And they do not have the opportunity to place a similar base in any neighboring country in the region. So the Americans, leaving Niger, lost their previous positions in central Africa and, to a large extent, in the Middle East,” Korolkov concluded.
The United States will soon withdraw a thousand troops from Niger. This was reported on April 19 by New York Times journalist Eric Schmitt. Washington, according to the journalist, will withdraw its troops in the coming months, which has already notified the authorities of the African country.
Reuters, citing an informed source, writes that during a meeting on April 19, Deputy Head of the State Department Kurt Campbell and the head of the current government of Niger reached an agreement on the withdrawal of US troops.
Earlier, IA Regnum reported that in March, the military that seized power in Niger broke the military agreement with the United States, which allowed Pentagon representatives and American military personnel to be in the country. The official reason for this step was a violation of diplomatic protocol: Washington did not inform Niamey about one of the recent visits of its delegation.
In the north of Niger there is a US military base where unmanned aerial vehicles are located, which were actively used by the American side for aerial reconnaissance. In December 2023, about 1,100 US military personnel were stationed in the African country.
Last summer in Niger, a group of military members of the presidential guard rebelled and removed President Mohamed Bazoum from power. The National Salvation Council was formed to govern the country, led by Guard commander Abdurahman Tchiani.
And on September 16, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger announced the creation of the Alliance of Sahel States. This association appeared to organize collective security in the region.
At the end of January, all three countries jointly decided to withdraw from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) as quickly as possible. The authorities of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger explained this step by saying that the organization, in their opinion, is under the influence of foreign powers.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The People's Liberation Army of China will have information support forces. The order to create a new unit was signed by Chinese President Xi Jinping. The Chinese government reported this.
Information support forces will be created on the basis of the strategic support forces created in 2015 to coordinate efforts in cyber warfare and political confrontation, which will be disbanded.
At the same time, the aerospace and cybernetic units previously subordinate to them will become independent.
Bloomberg reported that the changes in the Chinese army come amid competition with the United States for influence in the world and are the largest reorganization of the PLA since 2015.
It is also clarified that the Political Commissar of the Strategic Support Forces, Li Wei, will occupy the same position in the Information Support Forces. He promised to listen to Xi Jinping's instructions. Bi I was appointed the new commander of the information support forces.
As Regnum reported, in April last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping, during an inspection of the Southern Combat Command Zone of the People's Liberation Army of China, pointed out to Chinese military personnel the need to intensify preparations for real combat operations. The Chinese leader also noted the importance of deepening research in the military sphere and updating tactics and training methods.
In 2023, China increased national defense spending to 1553.7 billion yuan, up 7.2% from the previous year. The official representative of the National People's Congress of China, Wang Chao, then emphasized that the modernization of the armed forces of the PRC does not pose any threat to other countries of the world.
In 2024, China will increase defense spending by 7.2%. As noted by Reuters, this increase in military spending was the largest in the last five years.
China's central government's military spending is expected to rise to 1.67 trillion yuan (about $231 billion) in 2024, according to the Ministry of Finance's annual report. China's military budget ranks second in the world after the United States
One of the violent So Cal Antifa members in the case who was convicted and sentenced to 4.5 years in prison is Erich L. Yach, a trans person who used the fake name “Nikki Hubbard” and claimed to be a woman. Yach was already a convicted felon with pending felony charges when he… pic.twitter.com/lTzElRQJQB
[Goobjoog] National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) with support from local forces have killed at least 9 Al-Shabaab militants in an operation that targeted the group’s base near Bardale district in the Bay region.
According to reliable reports, the national forces recovered 9 AK-47 rifles, 1 PKM automatic machine gun, and 8 boxes loaded with ammunition during the operation.
[HODHODYEMENNEWS.NET] Banking sources confirmed on Saturday that the currency disruption in the city of Aden and the rest of the province controlled by Saudi-led coalition forces continued to confuse the economic situation, resulting in the deterioration of the riyal against foreign currencies.
According to the sources, the selling price of one dollar in Aden and the other southern and eastern 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... i provinces reached 1,683 riyals and 1,675 riyals to buy, while the exchange rate for buying and selling the Saudi riyal ranged between 442 and 443 Yemeni riyals.
The sources explained that the exchange rate of the dollar in Sanaa and the provinces under the control of the Supreme Political Council remained stable at 530 riyals to the dollar, and the exchange rate of the Saudi riyal was between 139 and 140 riyals.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/21/2024
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#1
confuse the economic situation
If they didn't have a confusing economy, they wouldn't have an economy at all.
[Rudaw] The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Saturday announced the capture of 38 suspected members of the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS) accused of planning acts of terror in northeast Syria (Rojava).
The SDF conducted an operation early Saturday morning alongside the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) that "resulted in the capturing of 38 ISIS cell suspects in addition to seizing a quantity of weapons and ammunition they possessed," according to a statement from the force’s press center.
"According to initial information, the captured suspects were planning to carry out terrorist acts against the city’s residents," added the statement.
Though ISIS no longer controls any territory, it continues to pose a security risk carrying out kidnappings, hit-and-run attacks, and bombings and the SDF conducts frequent operations against the group.
In Late February, the SDF captured 16 people accused of being members or affiliated with ISIS in Hasaka.
In the same month, SDF spokesperson Farhad Shami announced that their anti-terror forces (YAT), with the help of the global coalition, captured a key ISIS operative named Husin Nawaf al-Husin in Deir ez-Zor. Husin is accused of being responsible for ISIS operations "targeting military forces and civil institutions."
Last year, the SDF arrested more than 350 ISIS members in areas they control.
[HODHODYEMENNEWS.NET] Fighters from the Iraqi anti-terror resistance groups have launched a dronezap against a strategic target in the southernmost part of the 1948 Israeli-occupied territories
…not even pretending to pretend…
in response to the attack on a military base housing a coalition of anti-terror Popular Mobilization Units (PMU).
The Islamic Resistance® in Iraq, an umbrella group of anti-terror fighters, in a statement published on its Telegram channel, grabbed credit for the attack on the "vital" site in the port of Eilat, which lies at the northern tip of the Red Sea, on Saturday morning.
It said the dronezap was carried out in continuation of the second phase of the struggle against the occupying Israeli regime, in support of Paleostinians 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 an 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 in retaliation for the massacres that the usurping Zionist entity is perpetrating against ordinary people in the besieged territory.
The group noted that the strike also came in reprisal for grave violation of Iraqi illusory sovereignty and in response to the aggression on Hashd al-Sha’abi camps.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/21/2024
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The allocation of US military assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan will aggravate the crisis, noted the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova.
“The allocation of military assistance by the United States to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan will aggravate the global crisis...” she wrote on April 20 in her Telegram channel.
Pre-emptive surrender is indeed both easier and cheaper. In the short term, anyway.
The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry emphasized that providing military support to Kyiv is direct sponsorship of terrorist activities, and to Taiwan is interference in the internal affairs of China.
In addition, according to Zakharova, US assistance to the Israeli side will lead to an unprecedented escalation in the Middle East.
As Regnum reported, in mid-February the House of Representatives of the US Congress went on vacation without voting on the bill on military assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. American President Joe Biden criticized congressmen for their decision to go on break without approving the document.
Later, members of the House Brian Fitzpatrick and Jared Golden proposed an alternative version of the bill on assistance to Ukraine and Israel with tightening measures to protect US state borders. The document provided for the allocation of more than $66 billion to the Pentagon, of which about $47 billion was intended for Kyiv, and $10 billion and $5 billion for Tel Aviv and the countries of the Indo-Pacific region.
On April 20, the US House of Representatives passed a bill to provide aid to Ukraine. The preliminary amount planned to be allocated for these purposes will be $61 billion.
The document was supported by 311 congressmen, and 112 opposed it. The bill will then be sent to the upper house of Congress. If approved by American senators, the document will be submitted to the head of the White House for signature.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene called the allocation of aid to Ukraine a disgrace. She explained that this step leads to the destruction of an entire generation of the male population of this country.
Posted by: badanov ||
04/21/2024
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[Rudaw] Overnight explosions at a military base housing Iraqi gangs backed by Iran ...The nation is 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... on Saturday killed one fighter and caused injuries. The United States military denied responsibility.
The explosions hit Kalsu military base in Babil province, south of Baghdad, which houses fighters of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, or Hashd al-Shaabi).
Continued on Page 49
[IsraelTimes] 9 Israeli troops also hurt in festivities in Nur Shams refugee camp, adjacent to Tulkarem
The Israel Defense Forces on Saturday continued a counter-terrorism operation in the West Bank’s Nur Shams refugee camp, the military said on Saturday afternoon.
The raid, near Tulkarem, has been ongoing for more than 40 hours.
Amid the operation, the IDF said troops killed at least 10 button men and detained another eight wanted Paleostinians.
The troops also discovered and destroyed a bomb-making lab; seized firearms, including assault rifles; and used bulldozers to rip up roads where bombs were suspected to have been planted, the military said.
Eight soldiers and a Border Police officer were maimed as of Saturday afternoon amid festivities with Paleostinian button men and rioters. Their injuries were listed as light and moderate conditions.
Paleostinian media outlets reported that senior Paleostinian Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... terrorist Muhammad Jaber, known as Abu Shuja’a, was among those killed by troops.
He was the commander of Islamic Jihad’s local wing in Tulkarem, the reports said.
Paleostinian media also named Salim Ghannam, 30, and Qais Fathi Nasrallah, 16, as killed amid the raid.
The Palestinian Red Crescent says at least 14 people have been killed in an Israel Defense Forces raid in the Nur Shams refugee camp in the northern West Bank.
The IDF said earlier today that troops had killed 10 operatives during the counter-terrorism operation, which it said started on Thursday.
“So far, our crews have evacuated 14 martyrs from Nur Shams camp to the hospital,” the Palestinian Red Crescent says.
There is no immediate statement from the IDF on the PRC report.
Residents contacted by AFP say there is no electricity in the area and food is running short, but nobody is being allowed to enter or leave.
Three guesses, but you're only gonna need one.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC/Gray News) - Police in Tennessee are investigating a mass shooting at a block party that left at least two people dead and six others injured.
Police initially reported there were 16 total victims in the Saturday night shooting at Orange Mound Park in Memphis but later revised that number. A department social media post said further investigation revealed there were eight victims, two of whom were pronounced dead on scene.
Police say one person remains in critical condition at the hospital.
Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis said the shooting took place at a block party attended by about 200 to 300 people. It’s believed there was no permit for the party.
[HODHODYEMENNEWS.NET] The United States of America has reached an agreement with the Nigerien authorities to withdraw its forces, numbering more than a thousand soldiers, from the African country.
Agence La Belle France-Presse quoted American officials as saying that US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell agreed to the Niamey authorities’ request to withdraw forces, during a meeting in Washington with Prime Minister Ali Lamine Zein.
The agreement stipulates sending an American delegation to Niger in the coming days to agree on the details of the withdrawal.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/21/2024
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#1
Does anybody remember why they we're there?
Officially?
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/21/2024 5:45
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[IsraelTimes] The Israeli military says it has wrapped up a pinpoint raid against Hamas in the central Gaza Strip, during which troops destroyed more than 100 sites belonging to terror groups, killed some 40 operatives, and expanded the east-west corridor held by the army.
The operation, carried out by the 401st Armored Brigade and other troops under the 162nd Division on the outskirts of the Nuseirat camp, was aimed at clearing the area of Hamas operatives, destroying its infrastructure, including a tunnel network that allowed passage from Nuseirat to Gaza City, and expanding the Netzarim corridor.
The corridor, built around a road south of Gaza City and north of Nuseirat, enables the IDF to carry out raids in northern and central Gaza while allowing Israel to control access to the north for Palestinians seeking to return after fleeing south.
Amid the operation near Nuseirat, the IDF said it destroyed two rocket manufacturing plants, one belonging to Hamas and the other to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, among a total of around 100 sites.
The military says it also demolished 17 tunnel shafts, part of at least five separate underground networks. Rockets and launchers were also discovered and destroyed during the operation.
Some 40 gunmen were killed amid the fighting, including in airstrikes, the IDF said. Ahead of the offensive, a series of airstrikes were carried out in the area.
The 162nd Division has now mostly been withdrawn from Gaza. The division’s Nahal Brigade continues to be the sole unit in the Strip, operating in the Netzarim corridor, where the IDF says troops have killed more than 1,000 gunmen in the past three months.
Nahal is due to be replaced in the Netzarim corridor by a reserve brigade, to allow all of the division’s forces to prepare for future operations, including planned offensives in Rafah and central Gaza.
[IsraelTimes] Border Police officers detained a Paleostinian man allegedly affiliated 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.... jihadist movement, who planned to carry out a terror attack in "the immediate time frame."
The suspect was nabbed in the West Bank town of Beitunia, close to Ramallah, following intelligence provided by the Shin Bet, police say.
Police say the suspect attempted to flee when they reached his home, and was arrested as he tried to grab the gun of one of the officers.
He was handed over to the Shin Bet for further interrogation.
[GEO.TV] Prince Harry and Princess Meghan Markle ...unlikable American former starlet married to the formerly likable Prince Harry. Chock full of lefty political opinions, Markle's most important characteristic is that she is Black, even though she doesn't look it. Her mother, y'see, is half black and her father is white, which would make her a quarter Black. Her half brother described her (to her husband, before their marriage) as a jaded, shallow, conceited woman that will make a joke of you and the royal family heritage. Once married, she was too good for the Royals and she and Harry decamped to Beverly Hills, kind of like the Clampetts did, thus making a joke of Harry and the royal family heritage... have become Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,n Royals in order to appease their image.
The Duke of Sussex, who has changed his primary place of residence, is comments re r upon for being loss.
Royal editor Sean O'Grady said: "It is a bit painful to reflect on all the goodwill for the future heaped on Harry and Meghan when they got married, only six years ago next month. Whoever is to blame for the collapse in their relationship with Britannia since, the country lost something quite special when the Sussexes decamped to North America.
"Nor does the process feel complete; it’s not long since he officially changed his surname, and that of his family, from Mountbatten-Windsor to plain Sussex."
Speaking about Harry’s future, the editor added: no"The next logical step for the couple is to become Mr and Mrs Sussex. Then it will be how long before the Duke of Sussex seeks US citizenship, complete with passport?"
Posted by: Fred ||
04/21/2024
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#1
Sorta like herpes...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/21/2024 8:15
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#2
To be precise, Harry is now a Resident Alien in possession of a Green Card? If so, then "Resident aliens must follow the same tax laws as U.S. citizens. If you're a resident alien, you must report your worldwide income from all sources, that is, income from both within and outside the United States. You'll file a Form 1040, U.S. Individual Income Tax Return or Form 1040-SR, U.S. Tax Return for Seniors."
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Bogdan Kish
[REGNUM] The pressure faced by the Republika Srpska is pushing President Milorad Dodik and his circle to serious actions that are not to the liking of the collective West, but bring it closer to a historic solution.
Criminal cases, foreign interference, threats and blackmail - over the past year, the Serbian entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina has faced unprecedented pressure due to its refusal to impose anti-Russian sanctions, give up its powers to Sarajevo and join NATO.
Milorad Dodik has repeatedly stated that the Serbian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina have several “red lines”, if they cross them, the region will face serious consequences. If the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH), with the help of the West, tries to “push” Banja Luka on a number of issues, including imposing anti-Serbian laws and recognizing the resolution on Srebrenica, the Serbs may declare independence.
But such an announcement is not the most difficult decision, unlike the pressure that is expected after. The main question is: will Banja Luka be able to survive?
REPRESENTATIVE DESTROYER
After the civil war, peace never came to Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the West, they decided to forcibly keep three peoples within one state, albeit divided into two parts - the Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation of BiH.
Since 1995, the country has introduced the position of High Representative, who is responsible for monitoring the implementation of the Dayton Peace Treaty. To say that all representatives vested with practically unlimited power worked against the Republika Srpska is an understatement.
However, I would like to dwell separately on the current High Representative, German politician Christian Schmidt, who was mired in scandals in his homeland and sent to Bosnia and Herzegovina into a kind of exile. His appointment is not recognized by Republika Srpska, Russia, or China, since his powers were not confirmed by the UN Security Council.
However, the lack of a UN Security Council mandate does not prevent Schmidt, who is actively supported by official Berlin and the US and British embassies, from pursuing a de facto anti-Serbian policy. The fact that Schmidt “wouldn’t work” with the Republika Srpska became clear when he insisted on implementing the “Law on Denial of Genocide in Srebrenica,” which not only prohibited denial, but also punished it with a prison term.
Republika Srpska, naturally, does not recognize either the law or the fact of genocide. In this regard, in August 2023, the prosecutor's office of Bosnia and Herzegovina brought charges against the president of the republic under the law on “failure to comply with decisions of the Constitutional Court and the High Representative.”
The confrontation between Schmidt and Dodik reached a new level when the High Representative, not recognized by many, tried to impose the “Electoral Law” and the “Property Law.”
The first assumed that the Central Election Commission (CEC) of BiH would have more rights and opportunities to influence the electoral process throughout the country, and the second - that all the property of the entities - from natural resources to government buildings - would belong to Sarajevo.
Both laws directly violate the Dayton Accords, which Schmidt is supposed to be enforcing. The innovations caused a strong reaction in Banja Luka, which stated that it not only does not recognize the imposition of such laws, but is also ready to consider the possibility of leaving BiH.
And recently, to these two “red lines” a third was added - work on a UN resolution on the genocide in Srebrenica.
“BOSNIA MAY NOT SURVIVE THE RESOLUTION”
In March, it became known that the Bosniak part of the Bosnia and Herzegovina mission to the UN was independently, without a decision from the BiH Presidency, working on a new resolution on Srebrenica. It is due to be presented at the UN General Assembly on May 2.
According to the draft resolution being prepared, July 11 will be declared “international day of genocide in Srebrenica”, the Serbian people will be called responsible for the genocide, and reparations may be demanded from the Republika Srpska and Serbia. Political pressure on the entity will also increase.
Despite the fact that such a resolution is not binding, a “sediment,” as they say, will remain. Moreover, neither the Germans, nor the British, nor the Spaniards, nor the Croats, etc. were not found responsible for genocide, despite proven crimes against humanity.
Just as the mass killings of Serbs in the concentration camps of Jasenovac, Jastrebarsko, Banica, and the executions in Kragujevac and Kraljevo were not declared genocide.
It is worth recalling that this is not the first attempt to assign such responsibility to the Serbs. In 2015, at the UN Security Council, the UK did everything to adopt a similar resolution, but then it was blocked by Russia.
The Russian “no” and the raised hand of the late permanent representative Vitaly Churkin saved the Serbian people from the stigma and again reminded Belgrade who its main ally is. The Russian diplomat himself received more than one monument in Serbia and the Republika Srpska for this decision.
And now nine years later, the West is again trying to adopt an anti-Serbian resolution, but not in the UN Security Council, but through the General Assembly, where no one has the right of veto.
Why now? Relations between Republika Srpska and Russia are at their peak. Milorad Dodik and Vladimir Putin presented each other with state awards, bilateral relations are developing in all directions. Banja Luka demonstratively refuses to introduce anti-Russian sanctions, which saves the whole of BiH from the status of an unfriendly country, and also blocks BiH’s entry into NATO.
Pressure on the Republika Srpska is also pressure on Serbia, which supports the Serbs on the other side of the Drina in everything. Belgrade and Banja Luka are Russia's only friends in the Balkans. This prevents the West from completely controlling the region and drawing the republics into NATO.
President Milorad Dodik has repeatedly called on the Bosniaks not to provoke the situation and not to incite ethnic hatred, since “Bosnia and Herzegovina may not survive the resolution.” According to the head of the RS, the Serbs see no point in continuing to live in the same country with those who consider their people guilty of genocide.
“Don't do this because it is not conducive to life in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This will not unite us, but will separate us forever. We do not want to live with those who say that the Serbian people are “genocidal”. We don’t want to live with you and we won’t live in the same country with you,” Dodik emphasized.
On April 18, a rally called “R. Serbia is calling you,” where the top leadership of the entity, as well as the Prime Minister and ministers from Serbia, were present. Several tens of thousands of Serbs from both sides of the Drina gathered in the square and presented a united front against the resolution on Srebrenica.
In addition, the Serbs do not understand why they should mourn the victims of others, while no one even remembers their losses for more than 30 years, which certainly does not contribute to reconciliation. From the stage, politicians declared that the national idea of the Serbs from Serbia and Republika Srpska is unification. The people supported.
Naturally, the brightest speaker was Milorad Dodik, who said : “Serbia is our land, our state. If it were God’s will, constitutional and any other justice, we would be an integral part of Serbia, and not this crap called Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
Hints of an imminent declaration of independence are heard more and more often in Banja Luka. And Republika Srpska is not limited to just words.
NOT BY RALLIES ALONE
On April 18, the Republika Srpska parliament adopted the report of an independent international commission. At one time, Banja Luka asked her for help in investigating the events in Srebrenica and the surrounding area in order to prove that accusations of genocide were lies. The group was led by the famous Israeli historian and “Nazi hunter” Gideon Greif.
According to the commission's findings, during the entire period of the war from 1992 to 1995, 3,741 people died in the Srebrenica region, more than 2,500 of them were Serbs. The National Assembly of the RS supports the point of view expressed in the conclusions of the commission and confirms that the term “genocide” for Srebrenica is incorrect and cannot be accepted.
At the same time, Parliament expresses its respect to the victims of the tragic conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina and their families and condemns the war crimes committed by all parties.
The report of the commission led by Greif is the only legitimate document that recognizes the Serbian entity.
Banja Luka also adopted its own law, which provides for the holding of municipal and republican elections. “We will return what belongs to us,” Dodik said.
Thus, the Republika Srpska actually ousted the Central Election Commission of BiH from its territory, and the Serbs working in this body resigned. This is how Banja Luka wants to protect itself from interference in the elections from Sarajevo.
If the resolution on Srebrenica is adopted, the Republika Srpska will not stop there and will return all its powers that were given by the Dayton Peace Agreement. Powers that, over the years, have effectively been taken away by Sarajevo and the West, using various pressures - from threats to personal sanctions.
The list of initial powers belonging to the Dayton Republic includes the return of the army, jurisdiction in the fields of justice, energy, government procurement, tax policy, border control, the electoral process, and so on.
In fact, Republika Srpska may soon become a full-fledged and independent state within the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and then, possibly, beyond them.
The West continues to rely on Sarajevo in attempts to create a unitary Bosnia, which will oppose Russia, join NATO, and move away from Serbia. Republika Srpska does not see any point in continuing to coexist with the Federation of BiH within the framework of an artificially created state.
Milorad Dodik has made this clear with his latest statements. Given the seriousness of his intentions and the noticeably tougher rhetoric, Banja Luka clearly has an action plan and, apparently, support outside the entity.
One thing is for sure - in the near future the Balkans will not let the world get bored again.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] A Ukrainian detained in North Ossetia faces up to 20 years in prison for espionage, the FSB border department in the republic reported on April 20.
A criminal case was opened against a 36-year-old detained citizen of Ukraine under Article 276 of the Criminal Code (“Espionage”). If his guilt is proven, the Ukrainian faces up to 20 years in prison.
According to the department, the detainee was collecting information about the location of personnel and military equipment of the Russian army in the Northern Military District zone. After which he sent it to the curator via messenger.
As Regnum reported, on April 20, security forces detained a 36-year-old Ukrainian on suspicion of espionage. He tried to leave for Georgia through the Verkhniy Lars checkpoint.
As it became known on April 5, on the territory of the LPR, FSB officers detained a man for transferring data about Russian border guards to Kiev. According to investigators, the man had been working for the SBU since 2019, helping the Ukrainian side establish the identities of Russian border guards. The SBU recruited him using the compromising evidence they had.
At the end of March, FSB officers detained a Ukrainian citizen in the LPR, who was transmitting to the SBU data on the locations of Russian military members of the SVO. That same month, security forces detained a resident of Mariupol on suspicion of espionage. The detainee collected data on the location of Defense Ministry units in the DPR. She passed on the information she received to Ukrainian intelligence services on social networks.
Summary: The O'Biden Regime's FBI was cleared by the O'Biden Regime's DOJ of targeting Traditional Religious Catholics.
Biden still has not been excommunicated for his open support of immoral and abnormal lifestyles. [FoxNews] The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been exonerated by a Department of Justice review that found investigators did not intend to target traditional Catholics as potential "racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists."
The Justice Department Inspector General review noted, however, that analysts "incorrectly conflated" an investigative subject's religious views with his alleged domestic terrorism activities.
Findings from the 120-day review, which was handled by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz and ordered by Congress, were outlined in a letter sent to members of Congress on Thursday.
An FBI Richmond, Virginia, internal memo, titled "Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities," was leaked in January 2023 and drew instant criticism from Republicans, who demanded immediate answers from the agency.
According to the inspector general's report, the memo, which has been dubbed the "Richmond Product," was circulated amid an investigation of a potentially violent individual who was identified in the report as "Defendant A" and has since been arrested.
Though Defendant A was not been identified in the report, the dates and details of the case match the case against Xavier Lopez, who was indicted on federal weapons charges last June.
The FBI had been monitoring the suspect since 2019 due to his extremist views on social media, according to the inspector general's review.
The review stated that the suspect expressed neo-Nazi rhetoric and described himself as a "Catholic clerical fascist." The FBI said he wrote in a letter to a family member that he needed to "build guns, explosives, and other forms of weaponry" in order to "make total war against the Satanic occultist government and the Zionist devil worshiping bankers who control it."
The indictment against Lopez did not mention the church he attended or that he was monitored ahead of his arrest in November 2022, when a search of his apartment uncovered Molotov cocktails and firearms he was not allowed to possess. Lopez was on probation at the time after pleading guilty to felony vandalism for slashing tires.
Though the investigation was appropriate, the inspector general's review criticized aspects of the memo warning about potential extremism within certain Catholic churches that was shared by the FBI's Richmond field office.
"The [FBI Inspection Division] report found that although there was no evidence of malicious intent or an improper purpose, the [memo] failed to adhere to analytic tradecraft standards and evinced errors in professional judgment, including that it lacked sufficient evidence or articulable support for a relationship between RMVEs (Racially Motivated Violent Extremists) and so-called RTC (Radical Traditional Catholicism) ideology; incorrectly conflated the subjects’ religious views with their RMVE activities, creating the appearance that the FBI had inappropriately considered religious beliefs and affiliation as a basis for conducting investigative activity; and reflected a lack of training and awareness concerning proper domestic terrorism terminology," the inspector general noted.
One of the FBI analysts involved in the creation of the memo maintained that the goal was to enable FBI Richmond to conduct outreach to these "faith communities to make them aware of what we would call warning signs to radicalization, for the protection of everybody."
Posted by: NN2N1 ||
04/21/2024
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#1
Actually the FBI has a lot in common with Cafeteria Catholics, pick the laws you like and ignore the ones you don't like.
#4
Trust restored. My fears are alleviated. I will resume my search for the two missing droids.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
04/21/2024 8:07
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#5
As to the first comment about why Biden has not been excommunicated: I asked that exact question of our parochial vicar (i.e., assistant pastor).
He said that only the pope can excommunicate a head of state.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
04/21/2024 11:28
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[IsraelTimes] America working on temporary pier for aid transfer after strike that killed WCK workers leaves humanitarian groups needing greater assurance
[IsraelTimes] Palestinian leader rails at Washington which he says ’continues to support the occupation, has violated all international laws and abandoned all promises’.
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin
In which Rozhin channels his inner Comrade Stalin
[ColonelCassad] Regarding the heated debate about the role of games in education and leisure, then:
1. Video games have long turned into the same element of mass leisure for citizens as watching a movie, listening to music, reading a book, etc. Anyone who does not understand this is hopelessly stuck in the past and simply does not understand modern society. Ko-ko-ko, games for children and the like - this is senile grumbling at the entrance. In the Russian Federation, the games market (PCs, consoles, mobile devices) in 2023 exceeded the film market. At the same time, one should not confuse ordinary hobbies and recreation with gaming addiction and escape from reality into virtual worlds to the detriment of full life activity.
2. Video games have long been used to teach military personnel certain skills. Defense agencies fund the production of (professional) gaming simulators as needed and also support the use of related simulators from the consumer market. There is also a practice of financing targeted video games in the interests of propaganda or popularization of contract service in the army, which the Pentagon has been doing for a long time and successfully.
But there are also game strategic models where real military conflicts are simulated, which is used in the training of officers.
3. So games occupied their niche in the near-military environment a long time ago and successfully. This is not a question of whether it is necessary or not, but rather a question of how and why to use them, which requires the integration of this segment into the process of training certain skills, including before entering military service (the most commonplace now is orientation skills in three-dimensional space and piloting using a joystick/remote control - initial skills can be acquired even before getting acquainted with professional simulators). This does not mean that a person who only knows how to sit on the couch with a joystick will become an excellent fighter tomorrow, it means that he will already come to the army with good skills, which, if properly trained, will allow him to become an effective professional.
3. Should the government control the video game market? It certainly should. If left to its own devices, it will be occupied by the enemy's products one way or another. This entails the need for state subsidies for the domestic gaming industry (within reasonable limits - the same “Smoot”, which was actually released in an alpha version, is a negative example, it would have needed another 1-1.5 years for development and additional investments) and censorship foreign products (especially in war conditions). It is advisable to involve professionals in the development of the entire segment of the Russian gaming industry, and not just officials, who often simply do not understand the issue. As a guide, you can take China, where there is government regulation of the gaming industry, censorship of Western games entering the Chinese market, and the use of games to promote the state, army and patriotism.
[Garowe] The government of Turkey is set to commence drilling of oil from next year in Somalia, in what could double economic fortunes of the Horn of Africa nation, which has struggled with insecurity for the last three decades since the removal of Siad Barre.
Somalia's energy minister Alparslan Bayraktar said deep sea drilling in the country will kick off soon, adding that 'this will solve our tradition social-economic challenges ' which have been affecting the country since independence.
Turkiye and Somalia signed an offshore oil and natural gas cooperation deal last month, further strengthening ties after agreeing a defence deal this year. The deal was accompanied by maritime agreement that caused jitters in the Horn of Africa..
Turkey's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that bilateral trade volume with Somalia reached $187.3 million in 2018 and $250.85 million in 2019. Ankara has been a major security and development partner of Mogadishu.
The total value of Turkish investments in Somalia has reached $100 million, while Mogadishu International Airport and Mogadishu Sea Port are both run by Turkish companies in Somalia. The recent maritime agreement is set to protect Somalia from Ethiopia’s impending aggression..
The deal, sources said, irked the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which had signed a similar agreement with Somalia, leading to misunderstanding. President Hassan Sheikh recently visited Saudi Arabia where he sent emissaries to solve the outstanding issues.
Somalia's maritime oil reserves are on the verge of exploration in recent times, with the country also managing to win an international case against Kenya following a dispute over ownership of Indian Ocean maritime oil deposits. The resources are projected to economically assist the country to stabilise.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
04/21/2024
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[Garowe] Somalia's breakaway region of Somaliland has arrested at least 170 Æthiopian nationals, in what is related to human trafficking within the Horn of Africa, a move which could trigger another round of political duels, or rather, trigger fallout within the region.
The Coast Guard Corps associated with the breakaway region of Somaliland arrested the suspected human traffickers, just at the time the region is having talks with Æthiopia over possible recognition, sending shockwaves in Mogadishu, which accuses Æthiopia of violation of territorial integrity.
According to reports, the Coast Guard arrested the suspects around the Sanaag region within SSC Khatumo areas, and are said to have been escaping to alternative routes. They have been taken into custody to face prosecution over crimes against humanity.
The Somaliland Coast Guard in Sanaag Region said it conducted an operation in the specific area of Waqadariya on the eastern coast of Sanaag Region and apprehended the trafficking victims as they were being smuggled out in boats without knowledge of authorities.
The migrants colonists who were en route to 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... were detained from a large boat at the coast in the Sanaag region. Yemen, a largely unstable country, has been under the control of Iran's Houthi sock puppets ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The legitimate Yemeni government has accused the them of having ties to the Iranian government. Honest they did. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews They like shooting off... ummm... missiles that they would have us believe they make at home in their basements. On the plus side, they did murder Ali Abdullah Saleh, which was the only way the country was ever going to be rid of him... rebels who are fighting to control the government against the laid procedures and laws.
Recently, Æthiopia signed an agreement with Somaliland, causing diplomatic rifts with Somalia, which has since banished Æthiopia's envoy to the country, while closing consulates in different parts of Somalia. The matter has caused jitters across the world, with the international community calling for tolerance.
Æthiopia wants part of the Red Sea for the construction of a naval base and port, in exchange for recognizing the breakaway region as a sovereign state. Somaliland is fighting to get recognition but the international community remains non-committal, insisting it is part of Somalia.
Article Linked To Is Available Only Via VPN.
[EngMilRu] The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue the special military operation.
The Zapad Group of Forces' units captured more advantageous lines and inflicted fire damage on manpower and hardware of AFU 77th Airmobile, 43rd Mechanised, and 110th Territorial Defence brigades near Beryozovka, Senkovo, and Zagoruykovka (Kharkov region).
Three attacks launched by assault groups of AFU 63rd Mechanised, 12th and 18th National Guard brigades were repelled close to Chervonaya Dibrova (Lugansk People's Republic) and Grigorovka (Donetsk People's Republic).
The AFU losses amounted to up to 30 Ukrainian troops, two armoured fighting vehicles, and three motor vehicles.
The Yug Group of Forces' units improved the situation along the front line and inflicted fire damage on manpower and hardware of AFU 79th air assault, 46th Airmobile, 22nd and 67th Mechanised brigades close to Maksimilyanovka, Stupochki, Paraskoviyevka, and Kalinina (Donetsk People's Republic).
Three counterattacks of the AFU 28th Mechanised Brigade's units were repelled west of Krasnoye (Donetsk People's Republic).
The AFU losses amounted to up to 610 Ukrainian troops, two armoured fighting vehicles, five motor vehicles, one 152mm Msta-B howitzer, one 152mm D-20 howitzer, one ammunition depot, as well as one Nota electronic warfare station.
The Tsentr Group of Forces' units improved the tactical situation and repelled eight counterattacks launched by assault groups of AFU 25th Airborne, 23rd, 24th, 100th, and 115th Mechanised brigades close to Novobakhmutovka, Leninskoye, Pervomayskoye, and Novokalinovo (Donetsk People's Republic).
The enemy lost up to 355 Ukrainian troops, two infantry fighting vehicles, and five motor vehicles.
In the course of the counterbattery warfare, one Czech-made 152mm Dana self-propelled gun, one 152mm D-20 howitzer, one 122mm Gvozdika self-propelled artillery system, and one 122mm D-30 howitzer were hit.
The Vostok Group of Forces' units captured more advantageous lines and inflicted losses on manpower and hardware of AFU 72nd Mechanised, 128th Territorial Defence brigades near Staromayorskoye and Urozhaynoye (Donetsk People's Republic).
The AFU losses amounted to up to 120 Ukrainian troops, two armoured fighting vehicles, three motor vehicles, one U.S.-made 155mm M777 howitzer, four ammunition depots, as well as one Anklav electronic warfare station.
The units of the Dnepr Group of Forces have inflicted fire damage on manpower and hardware of AFU 23rd National Guard, 121st Territorial Defence brigades close to Nikopol (Dnepropetrovsk region), Mikhaylovka and Zolotaya Balka (Kherson region).
The enemy losses were more than 30 Ukrainian troops, four motor vehicles, one 152mm D-20 gun, one 122mm D-30 howitzer, and one U.S.-made 105mm M119 howitzer.
Operational-Tactical Aviation, Missile Troops and Artillery of the Russian Groups of Forces have engaged one aviation fuel depot, two transport infrastructure facilities used for military purposes, as well as AFU manpower and hardware in 112 areas.
Russian air defence units have shot down one Su-25 aircraft of Ukrainian Air Force, 213 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as five French-made Hammer aerial guided bombs.
In total, 591 airplanes and 270 helicopters, 22,095 unmanned aerial vehicles, 506 air defence missile systems, 15,812 tanks and other armoured combat vehicles, 1,267 combat vehicles equipped with MLRS, 8,991 field artillery cannons and mortars, as well as 21,183 units of special military equipment have been destroyed during the special military operation.
[GEO.TV] Pakistain has made formal request to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for seeking next bailout package in the range of $6 to $8 billion under Extended Fund Facility (EFF) with possibility of augmentation through climate financing, The News reported on Saturday.
However, death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate... the exact size and timeframe will only be determined after evolving consensus on the major contours of the next programme in May 2024.
The News sent out message to the members of Pak delegations, who are currently visiting Washington for attending the annual spring meetings of the IMF/World Bank, but got no reply till filing of this report.
Pakistain has shown its interest and also made a request to dispatch the IMF review mission in May 2024 to firm up details of the next bailout package of three years period under EFF programme.
Although, Pak authorities are pitching rosy picture of the economy but the IMF, in its latest Regional Economic Outlook (REO), released by Middle East and Central Asia (ME&CA) department stated that Pakistain’s external buffers deteriorated, mostly reflecting ongoing debt service, including Eurobond repayments.
"Where inflationary pressures persist, monetary policy should remain tight and follow a data-dependent approach (Egypt, Kazakhstan, Pakistain, Tunisia, Uzbekistan), while closely monitoring risks of a reversal of inflation developments," it added.
After contracting in 2023, growth in Pakistain is projected to rebound to 2% in 2024, supported by continuing positive base effects in the agriculture and textile sectors. Morocco’s growth projection has been revised down by 0.5 percentage point since October to 3.1%, largely reflecting slowing domestic demand.
Further ahead, growth in MENA emerging market and middle-income economies (EM&MIs) and Pakistain is projected to accelerate to nearly 4% in 2025 as constraints to growth this year (tight policies and country-specific events, including spillovers from conflict) begin to wane. Nonetheless, continued tight macroeconomic policies to tackle high levels of debt and inflation in some countries, coupled with persistent structural challenges, are expected to hold back medium-term economic activity, with growth remaining below historical averages in most economies.
In turn, public sector gross financing needs will remain a significant challenge for most EM&MIs and Pakistain. Public gross financing needs over 2024 are projected to rise to nearly 115% of fiscal revenues ($261.3 billion), an increase of about 5.6 percentage points compared to the IMF’s October projections.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/21/2024
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#1
possibility of augmentation through climate financing
Worth noting, korrespondent.net has compiled its Invasion of Ukraine series into separate months, beginning May 9th, 2023. Linked in the title.
[Korrespondent] 22:43 US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit China next week to try to convince Beijing to stop supporting Russia in the war against Ukraine, AFP writes.
21:54 Shmygal announced which areas will receive assistance from the United States totaling almost $61 billion:
$49.9 billion - defense spending;
$7.8 billion - potential budget support;
$1.57 billion - economic assistance;
$400 million - funds for border protection and humanitarian demining.
21:35 The Russians destroyed five out of 31 Abrams tanks in Ukraine in two months, writes The New York Times. According to the Oryx portal, a total of 796 Ukrainian battle tanks have been destroyed or captured since the start of the full-scale war, and Russia has lost more than 2,900 tanks.
21:02 The US House of Representatives passed a bill to help Ukraine in the amount of more than $60 billion. Next, the document must be supported by the Senate. In addition, the House of Representatives adopted a bill on the confiscation of frozen assets of the Russian Federation in favor of Ukraine - we are talking about $8 billion.
20:16 The Russians launched a missile attack on Odessa - eight people were wounded, including two children born in 2021 and 2020. At least 20 private homes were damaged, prosecutors said.
19:28 Lithuania handed over a new package of military assistance to Ukraine, which included a combat aircraft - the L-39ZA Albatross light attack aircraft in a disassembled state, the country's Ministry of Defense reported. This aircraft was used by the Lithuanian Army to train fighter control officers, who ensure the combat readiness of pilots.
14:07 The number of deaths as a result of today's shelling of Volchansk, Kharkov region, has increased to two, two more people were injured, said the head of the OVA Oleg Sinegubov. According to him, the enemy used UMPB D-30 ammunition.
11:53 The newly appointed commander of the Danish defense, General Michael Wiggers Gildgaard, visited Kiev, Syrsky reported. During the meeting, the parties discussed the urgent needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in various areas and ways and opportunities for further support from the Danish government.
11:49 Today’s night drone attack on electrical substations and an oil depot in Russia was a joint operation of the SBU, Main Intelligence Directorate and Special Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, reports RBC-Ukraine, citing sources in the special services. The target was the energy infrastructure that powers the Russian military-industrial complex. After the attacks, some areas experienced problems with electricity and water supply. In particular, an oil refinery in the Smolensk region and at least two electrical substations in Kaluga and Bryansk were attacked.
11:28 Zelensky put into effect the decision of the National Security and Defense Council to restrict gambling on the Internet. In particular, the National Security and Defense Council decided to limit advertising of online casinos, set weekly gaming limits and spending limits, and also introduce restrictions for the military. Earlier it was reported about a problem at the front: many military personnel lose all their money in online casinos.
11:03 In the morning, the Russians fired at Volchansk, Kharkov region - they hit a nine-story building and a private house, one person was killed, one was injured, said the head of the OVA Oleg Sinegubov.
09:21 At night, the Russians attacked the industrial infrastructure of Zaporozhye with ballistics. There were no reports of casualties, details are being determined, the Southern Defense Forces said. In addition, in the morning the enemy launched a ballistic attack on Odessa - an infrastructure facility was hit.
08:59 Rescue operations have been completed in Dnieper after the Russian missile attack on April 19, the State Emergency Service reported. At night, rescuers unblocked the body of another victim from under the rubble of a high-rise building. As a result of the attack in the city, three people were killed and 24 were injured. In total, due to Russian attacks on April 19 in the Dnepropetrovsk region, eight people were killed, including two children, and 34 were injured, including one child. Today is a day of mourning in the region.
08:41 On the night of April 20, Russia attacked Ukraine with three Iskander-M ballistic missiles, two S-300/S-400 anti-aircraft guided missiles from the Belgorod region, as well as two Kh-59/Kh-69 guided aircraft missiles from the Black Sea, the Air Force command reported. Air defense forces destroyed two Kh-59/Kh-69 missiles. In addition, three reconnaissance UAVs were destroyed in the southern direction - two Orlan-10 and one SuperKam.
08:26 The General Staff announced the estimated losses of the Russian Federation as of the morning of April 20:
personnel - about 458,580 (+750) people,
tanks - 7213 (+8),
armored combat vehicles - 13,873 (+21),
artillery systems - 11,678 (+20),
MLRS - 1046 (+0),
air defense systems - 763 (+1),
aircraft - 348 (+1),
helicopters - 325 (+0),
UAV of operational-tactical level - 9341 (+30),
cruise missiles - 2109 (+13),
ships/boats - 26 (+0),
submarines - 1 (+0),
automotive equipment and tank trucks - 15,717 (+46),
special equipment - 1918 (+3).
08:13 Over the past 24 hours, 102 military clashes took place at the front, the General Staff reported in its morning report. In particular, 31 attacks were repelled in the Avdeevsky direction (in the areas of the settlements of Novokalinovo, Ocheretino, Berdychi, Umanskoye, Novobakhmutovka, Pervomaiskoye, Nevelskoye, Donetsk region) and 23 attacks in the Bakhmutskoye direction (in the areas of the settlements of Belogorovka, Luhansk region, as well as Verkhnekamennoe, Spornoye, Chasov Yar, Ivanovskoe, Kleshcheevka, Donetsk region). In addition, the enemy tried 23 times to break through the defenses of Ukrainian troops in the Novopavlovsk direction - in the Novomikhailovka, Pobeda, Urozhayny districts of the Donetsk region.
The enemy did not conduct offensive actions in the Kupyansk direction. In the Liman direction, the Defense Forces repelled 13 enemy attacks in the areas of the settlements of Tverdokhlebovo, Kremennaya in the Lugansk region and Yampolevka, Terny, Torskoye in the Donetsk region; on Orekhovsky - five attacks in the Staromayorskoye area of the Donetsk region and north-west of Verbovoy, Zaporozhye region; on Kherson - seven attacks on the left bank of the Dnieper.
07:28 The Russian Ministry of Defense stated that during the night 50 drones were allegedly shot down over the territory of the country: 26 - over the territory of the Belgorod region; ten - over the territory of the Bryansk region; eight - over the territory of the Kursk region; two - over the Tula region and one each - over the territories of the Smolensk, Ryazan, Kaluga and Moscow regions.
At the same time, Russian media report that a fire occurred at a number of energy facilities, allegedly as a result of “falling debris.” Thus, in the Bryansk region there was a fire at an electrical substation, in the Kaluga region the energy infrastructure was damaged, and in the Smolensk region there was a fire at a fuel and energy complex facility.
04:24 More than half of the military fund for assistance to Ukraine, which is managed by the British Ministry of Defense, was not used due to bureaucratic delays in contracts, The Guardian writes, citing statements by British Labor. Thus, of the £900 million provided by donor governments over the past two years (500 million of which came from the UK), only £404 million has been allocated or spent. The ministers admitted that some of the equipment provided for in the signed contracts will not arrive in Ukraine until the spring of next year.
Posted by: badanov ||
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[NewsFront] 23:12 Front birdbroadcasts: Kharkov region (border region). New strikes.
It is reported that FAB-500 and KAB-500 hit buildings and structures of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. An enemy armored engineering vehicle and trucks were also reported to have been hit.
Our KABs hit Ukrainian Armed Forces targets with pinpoint accuracy. The strikes were carried out by our front-line bombers.
21:35 Good news from the Ugledar direction. Marines of the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade have taken Novomikhailovka after a months-long assault. It was a damn difficult assault, but the naval infantry turned the enemy around.
20:15 Chasov Yar.
The enemy expects another massive attack on Chasov Yar and the surrounding area in the next 24 hours.
Reported about a significant concentration of our army in this area.
19:25 Hit at the Zaporozhye Electric Locomotive Repair Plant.
Russian troops continue to test the enemy's railway infrastructure. Tonight, two Iskander-M OTRK missiles struck the territory of the Zaporozhye Electric Locomotive Repair Plant.
Coordinates: 47.8297603, 35.1726337
It is known that the assembly and electrical machine shops of the enterprise were destroyed by the blows.
The assembly shop's capacities were used to repair heavy armored vehicles, and on the territory of the electric machine shop a parking lot was organized for equipment that was awaiting repair.
As a result of the damage, a strong fire broke out in the electrical machine shop area, which was accompanied by dull explosions. The exact amount of equipment that was at the facility or was destroyed is currently unknown.
One electric locomotive and several cars were also damaged as a result of the impact.
18:40 Series of powerful explosions in Konstantinovka.
After arrival, a secondary detonation is heard. The alarm continues to roar in eastern Ukraine.
17:22 Krivoy Rog. Explosion.
Single powerful explosionthunderedat a military industrial enterprise in the suburbs of Krivoy Rog.
Local public pages write about a bright flash.
16:35 Battle for Krasnogorovka. 122mm BM-21 MLRS "Grad" from the 238th Guards Artillery Brigade support the advance of our troops with fire -video.
15:20 Around 14.30 Moscow timesuppressedan attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack using aircraft-type UAVs against targets on the territory of the Russian Federation.
Three Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles were destroyed by air defense systems on duty over the territory of the Belgorod region.
14:39 Hit at the enemy point in Druzhkovka.
At night, Russian troops attacked the enemy’s deployment point in Druzhkovka.
Coordinates: 48.6325740, 37.5265221
The enemy continues to deploy personnel in residential areas, hiding behind civilians. The impact damaged houses near the intersection of Novaya and Krasnodontsev streets.
12:20 Arrivals in Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye. struck infrastructure facilities.
11:54 More than eight regions of the Russian Federation shot down 50 Ukrainian UAVs.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported repelling a large-scale UAV attack on Russian regions. Duty air defense systems intercepted and shot down 50 aircraft-type UAVs: 26 in the Belgorod region, 10 in the Bryansk region, eight in the Kursk region, two in the Tula region and one each over the territories of the Smolensk, Ryazan, Kaluga and Moscow regions.
As a result of the raid in the village of Poroz, Grayvoronsky district, Belgorod region,two local residents were killed: a disabled woman and a man caring for her. In the Bryansk region, when a downed UAV fell, an energy infrastructure facility caught fire.
10:45 Powerful explosions thundered in the suburbs of Dnepropetrovsk and Kherson, the air raid alarm is blaring.
Fires started at the arrival site, local channels write.
09:52 Telegram channel «WarGonzo":
Frontline report for the morning 04/20/2024
– On the Zaporizhzhya Front there are no significant changes in the LBS. Encounter battles continue in Rabotino and north-west of Verbovoy.
– On the Donetsk front, the Russian Armed Forces continue to advance in a number of directions. In Krasnogorovka, Russian troops continue to carry out assault operations within the city limits.
In Netailovo, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are putting up stubborn resistance, and there are fierce battles for landings.
In Semyonovka and Berdychi, the Russian Armed Forces continue to knock out Ukrainian troops from these settlements, actively using long-range weapons, including heavy flamethrower systems. There are advances of Russian troops in the direction of Novobakhmutovka.
In Ochertino, fighting continues on the eastern outskirts of the village. There are also advances of Russian troops in the village of Novokalinovo.
– Chasovoyarsk direction. Fighting continues in the Bogdanovka area. Russian troops continue to put pressure on the Ukrainian garrison in Chasov Yar from the eastern side, while simultaneously taking assault actions on the flanks
. 09:28 Criminal Kyiv regimecontinuesto fire at the civilian infrastructure of settlements on the left bank of the Kherson region, yesterday during the day the Ukrainian Armed Forces fired from cannon artillery:
-- n.p. Kakhovka three rounds;
-- n.p. Novaya Kakhovka two rounds;
-- n.p. Yubileiny two rounds;
-- n.p. Alyosha six rounds;
-- n.p. Kairos four rounds.
During the night, the Kiev regime continued to shell civilian infrastructure in the village. Velyka Lepetikha, n.p. Novaya Mayachka, n.p. Novaya Kakhovka, n.p. Aleshki, n.p. Kakhovka, n.p. Dnipro fired a total of 17 rounds from cannon artillery.
As a result of the artillery attack of the settlement. One civilian was killed in Cairo, one local resident was injured in the village of Kakhovka, and Kyiv militants also attacked an ambulance.
08:56 Telegram channel «Fisherman":
Chronicle of a special military operation for April 19, 2024
– Russian troops attacked the enemy’s transport infrastructure in Dnepropetrovsk, Pavlograd and Krivoy Rog, as well as the port of Yuzhny in the Odessa region. A Tu-22 M3 strategic bomber crashed in the Stavropol Territory due to a technical malfunction.
– In the Artemovsky (Bakhmutsky) direction, fierce fighting continues on the eastern outskirts of Chasov Yar, as well as on the outskirts of Bogdanovka and in the Kleshcheevka area.
– In the Avdeevsky direction, Russian troops are consolidating on the outskirts of Ocheretino, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are drawing up reserves to prevent a breakthrough of the defense line.
– In the Donetsk direction, fighting continues in Krasnogorovka. Russian troops are advancing in the Pervomaisky area in the direction of Netailovo.
– In the Ugledar direction, Russian troops are storming the western outskirts of Novomikhailovka. At the Sladkoe - Novomikhailovka line, the Russian Armed Forces advanced slightly.
– There are no significant changes in the combat situation in the Zaporozhye direction. North of Rabotino, the enemy is accumulating reserves for a possible counterattack.
– In the Kherson direction, Ukrainian naval infantry maintain a presence in Krynki. Almost daily attempts by the Ukrainian Armed Forces to transfer reinforcements to the village by boat continue.
08:05 Official summary of Representative offices of the DPR in the JCCC.
A total of m31 cases of armed attacks by the Ukrainian Armed Forces were recorded by the DPR Representative Office in the JCCC.
Information was received about the death of one civilian, and three civilians were injured of varying degrees of severity.
Damaged:
One residential building.
Eight attacks from the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Donetsk direction.
A total of 23 attacks from the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Gorlovka direction.
In total, the Ukrainian Armed Forces fired 103 units of various ammunition.
Posted by: badanov ||
04/21/2024
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Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life,
Just the general background of daily living up there.
[Rudaw] Two separate dronezaps targeted a village near the Mawat district of Sulaimani province, resulting in material damage, the district’s mayor announced on Wednesday.
"We were targeted twice in the Sharbazher area by drones," Kamaran Hassan, Mayor of Mawat, which is part of the Sharbazher area, told Rudaw.
The first strike targeted a house in the Kurala village, according to Hassan, who noted that no one was in the house at the time of the attack.
Hassan said that in a separate strike, the Tazha and Shilana forests in Sharbazher area were targeted, resulting in no casualties, as was the case for the first strike.
Media affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) blamed The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...just another cheapjack Moslem dictatorship, brought to you by the Moslem Brüderbund... for the attack, while the Ottoman Turkish defense ministry has yet to comment on the matter.
Turkey frequently bombards areas of the Kurdistan Region under the pretext of targeting the PKK. In February, Kamaran Osman, a member of the Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT), a human rights ...which often include carefully measured allowances of freedom at the convenience of the state... organization that monitors Turkey’s operation in the Kurdistan Region, told Rudaw that Ankara conducted 1,548 such attacks in 2023.
Turkey has repeatedly warned the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which effectively controls the local governments in Sulaimani, about the PKK’s activities in the province, with Defense Minister Yasar Guler saying in September that his country is "continuously warning" Talabani about what he called "an increase in terrorist activities" in Sulaimani.
Last month, Ottoman Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said during a televised interview that the "cordial" relations between the PKK and the PUK "constitute a national security threat," for Ankara.
Iraq’s National Security Council banned the PKK from operating in the country last month, following a high-level meeting between Ottoman Turkish and Iraqi officials. The two sides discussed measures to be taken against the group, which Baghdad said poses a security threat to both countries.
In March, the PKK announced that it had downed 15 Ottoman Turkish drones between February 2023 and March 2024, adding that it had acquired new missile systems to shoot down, without providing details on the type and quantity of the acquisition.
Ottoman Turkish President His Enormity, Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ...Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey. In Anatolia did Recep Bey a stately Presidential Palace decree, that has 1100 rooms. That's 968 more than in the White House, 400 more than in Versailles, and 325 more than Buckingham Palace, so you know who's really more important... said last month that Ankara is close to completing a zone that will "permanently resolve" the security issues along their border with the Kurdistan Region and Iraq by the summer.
Erdogan is expected to visit Iraq next week and border security is expected to be one of the topics of discussion.
[IsraelTimes] Organizers say Lag B’Omer celebration will be moved entirely indoors at Ghriba synagogue, a cornerstone of millennia-old Djerba Jewry
The annual Jewish pilgrimage on Tunisia’s island of Djerba will be limited amid security concerns sparked by 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 an iron fist by Hamaswith 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 a deadly attack last year, organizers said Friday.
The pilgrimage to the Ghriba synagogue, Africa’s oldest, usually involves days-long festivities in the presence of thousands of pilgrims. It marks the Lag B’Omer festival, which begins 33 days after the start of Passover.
But this year’s pilgrimage on the resort island, set for May 24 to 26, is expected to draw fewer visitors amid the backdrop of the war between Israel and Hamas, a regional Iranian catspaw,, and last year’s terror attack in which five people were killed.
"The pilgrimage is not canceled," an organizer told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity ... for fear of being murdered... . But "everything will take place inside the synagogue."
The organizer said the pilgrimage will be limited to prayers inside the synagogue, and the lighting of candles.
"Given the current international context, security will also be tightened after what happened last year," the organizer added.
Last May 9, a policeman rubbed out three coppers and two pilgrims during the festival that resumed in 2022 after a two-year suspension because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
There have been at least two attacks on synagogues in Tunisia since October 7, when thousands of Hamas hard boyz invaded southern Israel from Gaza, murdering some 1,200 people and taking 253 hostage. In addition, Tunisian President Kais Saied has a history of making antisemitic statements.
This year’s pilgrimage will not include activities such as the open-air parade carrying the synagogue’s menorah.
Organizers say more than 5,000 people, mostly from abroad, joined last year’s pilgrimage. Up to 8,000 pilgrims attended in previous years.
The Ghriba pilgrimage also saw a suicide kaboom in 2002 that killed 21 people and was claimed by al-Qaeda.
The pilgrimage is at the heart of Jewish tradition in Tunisia, where only about 1,500 members of the faith still live — mainly on Djerba.
According to the Djerba community, Jews have lived there since at least the dawn of the first millennium CE, making it one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world.
The history of Jews in Tunisia dates back to Roman times, before the Moslem conquest of North Africa.
For centuries, the community prospered under various rulers, with occasional episodes of persecution — including by La Belle France’s fascist ...anybody you disagree with, damn them... Vichy rule during World War II, and then for a period under direct Nazi occupation. In 1948, when the State of Israel was founded, the community numbered 110,000.
It dwindled rapidly in the 1950s, as Jews emigrated en masse to La Belle France or Israel, leaving only 20,000 behind. Thousands more left the country in 1967 after anti-Jewish riots erupted during the Six Day War.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] On April 19, Russia celebrated the Day of United Action in memory of the genocide of the Soviet people by the Nazis and their accomplices during the Great Patriotic War.
On this day 81 years ago, Decree No. 39 of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was issued “On punitive measures for Nazi villains guilty of murder and torture of the Soviet civilian population and captured Red Army soldiers, for spies, traitors to the Motherland from among Soviet citizens and for their accomplices.”
It became the first fact of recognition of the purposeful and large-scale policy of the Nazis and their accomplices to exterminate civilians in the occupied territory and the punishability of such crimes, as well as the legal basis for the work to establish and investigate Nazi crimes against the Soviet people, which had been carried out since November 1942.
Every year on April 19, Russia celebrates the Day of United Action. In Russian regions, a set of commemorative events are held in schools, universities, scientific and cultural institutions, regional and municipal institutions, and non-profit organizations.
This year, the preparation was carried out by the National Center of Historical Memory under the President together with the ANO Agency for Social Technologies and Communications, OOD Search Movement of Russia, Moscow State Pedagogical University, Federal State Budgetary Institution Rospatriototsentr and 144 regional representatives.
Each region has its own characteristics and local components. In the regions that were under the occupation of the Nazi invaders, there are places that bear witness to the terrible crimes of the Nazis.
“April 19 is the day of united action for the unique project “Without a Statute of Limitations.” This is not only a significant date in preserving historical memory, the memory of the victims of genocide, but also concern for the future: about human values and global meanings of the younger generation,” said Elena Rodionova, first deputy chairman of the Public Chamber commission on volunteerism and youth policy.
She noted that the memory of the Great Patriotic War is dear to every resident of Russia. For four years in Russia, within the framework of the “No Statute of Limitations” project, work has been going on in order to prevent the repetition of Nazi crimes.
“Knowing and understanding the concepts of “fascism”, “Nazism”, “genocide” means preventing this from happening in the future. Over the years of implementation, this most important topic has become everyone’s business. The work of those who do more than they should,” Rodionova said.
This year, the Day of United Action was held in a multi-format mode. In the regions, original events were held dedicated to preserving the memory of the genocide of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War.
First Deputy Chairman of the Public Chamber Commission on Volunteering and Youth Policy Elena Rodionova
A presentation of publications about the genocide of the Soviet people took place in Moscow. The search movement launched the “We Remember” campaign, within which dozens of videos were published.
A number of events were held on April 18–19 at the site of the Mordovian State Pedagogical University. A thematic session “Without a Statute of Limitations” is taking place in Artek: the children visited the Memorial to the Victims of the Nazi Occupation of Crimea 1941–1944 “Red Concentration Camp”.
On April 19, participants of the All-Russian project “Keepers of History” laid flowers and set up guards of honor at mass graves and monuments. Victory volunteers held the All-Russian action “No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten.”
In the center of folk culture of the city of Yeisk in the Krasnodar Territory, the premiere of the play “On behalf of the dead,” based on real events, took place. Children from the Makeevka amateur theater showed the residents of Rostov-on-Don a play about the horrors of Nazi concentration camps, “Remember Your Name.”
Related from regnum.ru Serbia calls voting on the resolution on “genocide” in Srebrenica dangerous
The vote on the resolution on “genocide” in Srebrenica at the upcoming UN General Assembly threatens to devalue the term “genocide”, as well as the authority of the international organization, former Prime Minister and Speaker of the Serbian Parliament Ana Brnabic said at a briefing.
“For the first time, such a serious issue as genocide will be decided by a simple vote,” she said.
Brnabic added that the topic of genocide was raised only twice on the agenda of the UN General Assembly. According to her, Israeli historians Yehuda Bauer and Efraim Zuroff say that a war crime occurred in Srebrenica, but there was no genocide.
As the former prime minister suggested, the term “genocide” may then lose its meaning. She even added that some people probably wish the word didn't mean anything anymore.
A vote on the resolution proposed by Germany and Rwanda, which also includes a ban on denying the fact of genocide, is expected on May 2.
As Regnum reported, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on April 17 that the Republika Srpska could be abolished if July 11 is recognized as the International Day of Remembrance of the “genocide” in Srebrenica. According to him, if the resolution is approved, the Serbs will actually be equated to a “genocidal nation.” After this, as the president suggested, Bosnia and Herzegovina will be able to liquidate the Republika Srpska and demand reparations.
On July 11, 1995, Republika Srpska troops under the command of General Ratko Mladic entered Srebrenica, which had the status of a zone protected by UN forces. After this, the Serbs were accused of allegedly killing unarmed Bosnian Muslims. Various experts note that most of those killed during the battles for Srebrenica were soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Bosnia and Herzegovina announced its secession from Yugoslavia in 1992, after which a war began in the republic with the participation of Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats, which lasted until 1995. The numbers of victims of those events vary from five to 27 thousand killed Muslims.
In 2019, Serbia formed an independent international commission of inquiry into what happened in and around Srebrenica between 1992 and 1995 to provide a comprehensive and unbiased analysis of events in the region.
[HODHODYEMENNEWS.NET] The Islamic Resistance® in Leb ...an Iranian satrapy currently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... , led by Hezbollah, continued on Saturday to target Israeli occupation soldiers and military sites, in support of the Paleostinian people in the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an 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 and their resistance.
The Lebanese Resistance® announced in successive statements today, Saturday, the targeting of the Ruwaisat al-Alam site in the occupied Lebanese Kfar Shuba hills and the deployment of enemy soldiers in its vicinity with artillery shells, as well as targeting the Ruwaisat al-Alam site in the occupied Lebanese hills of Kafr Shuba and the deployment of Zionist enemy soldiers in its vicinity with artillery shells.
The resistance statements confirmed that the targeting operations included the deployment of Israeli enemy soldiers east of the "Even Menachem" colony with missiles and spy equipment at the Raheb site with appropriate weapons.
This morning, the Lebanese Resistance® announced that it had targeted the "Hadab Yarin" site in the Western Galilee with appropriate weapons, confirming that it was a direct hit, which was preceded by a targeting operation against a deployment of occupation soldiers in Jabal Adathar with missile weapons.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/21/2024
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Leni Riefenstahl only died in 2003. She was a four time winner at the Venice Film Festival (in the 1930s) once at the Kinema Junpo Awards (1941), and in 1974 took a silver at the Telluride Film Festival — for lifetime achievement, one imagines.
[IsraelTimes] For ’Portrait of a Martyr,’ Sakir Khader was awarded the Silver Camera prize, which the Silver Camera Association has bestowed upon distinguished photojournalists for 75 years.
A Dutch-Paleostinian photographer won the most prestigious journalism award in the Netherlands for a series of photos where some titles refer to dead jihadist forces of Evil as "deaders."
Occurring amid a debate about the ethics of journalists covering the October 7 onslaught, Sakir Khader’s prize, announced in February, has prompted criticism by watchdog groups on antisemitism and Dutch Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs. They warned that honoring Khader’s work can be construed as a dangerous endorsement of his rhetoric amid rising antisemitism in the Netherlands.
Khader, 33, was awarded the Silver Camera prize, which the Silver Camera Association has bestowed upon distinguished photojournalists for the past 75 years. He was recognized for a series titled "Life in the West Bank Before October 7," the day that some 3,000 forces of Evil invaded Israel from the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an 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, killing about 1,200 people and abducting another 253, among other war crimes and atrocities.
A spokesperson for the Silver Camera judges’ panel rejected the criticism, downplaying the significance of the titles the photographer gave the award-winning works.
On his official website, Khader titled one of the photos of the winning series "Portrait of a Martyr." It shows the body of Mahmoud Khaled Ar’arawi, who died in a firefight with Israeli soldiers in Jenin in September. Ar’arawi was wearing a headband emblazoned with the logo of the Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... , a Paleostinian terrorist group that the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... last week slapped with new sanctions along with Hamas ...a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",... for their operatives’ systemic rape of women during the October 7 onslaught in Israel, among other atrocities.
Martyr is a translation of shaheed, the Arabic-language term that many Moslems apply to people who have died fighting in a Jihad, a holy war, as well as to other war fatalities. A terrorist who died while carrying out an attack on Jews is generally referred to as a shaeed, or shohada in the plural form, in Paleostinian society and among many other Moslems.
Khader on his website and on social media makes frequent use of the term "martyr" to describe dead Paleostinian terrorists, including from Hamas. One of the people he photographed and described as a martyr in 2021 was Diaa al-Sabareen, an Islamic Jihad terrorist the group describes as an "explosives expert."
AN ’EMBRACE’ OF HAMAS
"The honoring of Khader is just one example of how many cultural institutions in Europa ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... have embraced or surrendered to the Hamas narrative," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the director of global social action for the Simon Wiesenthal Center advocacy group. "Shame on the committee that made such a decision," Cooper said.
Jacobs, the Dutch chief rabbi, called Khader’s terminology "dangerous" because it risks "inciting" people, he said.
"There is a symbolism here. This person’s pictures were selected for recognition for journalistic excellence. He says forces of Evil are deaders, so the next question is: Who killed them? The answer: The Jews. The Israelis. That’s when it becomes dangerous," Jacobs said.
Sacha Roytman Dratwa, the CEO of the Combat Antisemitism Movement, in a statement, wrote: "Giving an award to someone who honors an Islamic Jihad terrorist and murderer as a ’martyr’ is a sick testament to the glorification of murder that has seeped into parts of the media and mainstream discourse." He added: "The word shaheed is an honorific term for murderers. Giving an award to someone like this is extolling evil and spitting in the face of his terrorist organization’s victims."
The Netherlands saw a 245 percent increase in antisemitic incidents in 2023 over the previous years, reaching a record tally of 379 cases, most of them after October 7.
Khader did not reply to requests for comment by The Times of Israel.
Claudia Bergman, a spokesperson for the Silver Camera Association that’s responsible for the award, told The Times of Israel that the organization stands behind their decision to honor Khader.
"We did not explore whether Khader indeed used words like the ones you claim he did," Bergman wrote. She added that Silver Camera did not apply the term "martyr" to the titles of Khader’s work on its website and exposition. She declined to say how Silver Camera titles the pictures by Khader.
[Rudaw] A mass grave was found near the Yazidi heartland of Shingal (Sinjar), a human rights When they're defined by the state or an NGO they don't mean much... organization announced on Friday. The remains found are believed to be those of Yazidis killed 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.... (ISIS) during the group's control of the area.
The Petrichor Organization for Human Rights announced "the discovery of a new mass grave in the ’Siba Sheikh Khidir’ complex," in a statement published on their Facebook page which specified that the bodies buried in it were those of victims of the Yazidi genocide of 2014.
"The organization received information from site workers who were repairing the road for sidewalk installation, and immediately went to the site to investigate," added Petrichor in the statement, stressing that relevant authorities have been informed about the discovery.
Khairi Ali, the head of Petrichor told Rudaw that workers found clothes believed to belong to an elderly woman while working at the site, noting that there is currently no information regarding the number of the people buried in the mass grave.
ISIS seized control of large swathes of land in Iraq and Syria in 2014. The group committed genocide against Yazidis when they overran the ethnoreligious minority’s heartland of Shingal, killing around 5,000 Yazidi men, some of whom were put into mass graves. Around 7,000 women and girls, some as young as nine, were enslaved.
Exhumation of mass graves in Shingal began in 2019. Progress on this front halted during the coronavirus (aka COVID19 or Chinese Plague) ...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men... pandemic and resumed in October 2020.
The exhumations are carried out by the Iraqi government in coordination with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and are overseen by the United Nations ...an organization which on balance has done more bad than good, with the good not done well and the bad done thoroughly... Investigation Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by ISIS (UNITAD).
Posted by: trailing wife ||
04/21/2024
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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.
[MAIL] An OB/GYN doctor practicing in Washington state has been charged with the rape of an underage female family member, which prosecutors say has been going on for more than six years.
[Bee] At a recent press conference, President Joe Biden recounted a harrowing tale from his family's past: the time when his uncle had his heart ripped out and was sacrificed during a mysterious ritual in India.
[Gateway] It has been more than 8 months since the FBI killed disabled veteran 
...46th president of the U.S. The very model of probity, except maybe for abandoning Afghanistan...
Hezbollah
...In 2020 Hezbollah blew up a considerable portion of Beirut and many of its inhabitants when its ammonium nitrate facility exploded. They blamed it on... somebody else. It wasn't them though. Trust them on that. And it ain't never coming to trial...![]("Pix/biden_admin.png" "\"Biden")
...the collection of boodlers, grifters, hangers-on, and self-proclaimed 
...Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979...
[SlayNews] 
...the occupiers of Greek Asia Minor...
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
...... the personification of Somali state failure...
...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 .jpg)
...The nation is noted for 
...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 
...unlikable American former starlet married to the formerly likable Prince Harry. Chock full of lefty political opinions, Markle's most important characteristic is that she is Black, even though she doesn't look it. Her mother, y'see, is half black and her father is white, which would make her a quarter Black. Her half brother described her (to her husband, before their marriage) as a 
[FoxNews] The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been exonerated by a Department of Justice review that found investigators did not intend to target traditional Catholics as potential "racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists."
...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the 
...Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey. In Anatolia did Recep Bey a stately Presidential Palace decree, that has 1100 rooms. That's 968 more than in the White House, 400 more than in Versailles, and 325 more than Buckingham Palace, so you know who's really more important...
...anybody you disagree with, damn them...
...an Iranian satrapy currently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
...a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...![]("Pix/89d15dde7f6fe5ad01cd6cffcdac87bf055cf2f5.webp" "\"coronavirus")
...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men...
