h/t Instapundit
University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson has launched a $1.5-million defamation suit against Wilfrid Laurier University, two of its professors and a former gender and equity manager for suggesting he was "analogous to Adolf Hitler."
The statement of claim, prepared by lawyer Howard Levitt and filed Monday, says Peterson was falsely labelled as incompetent, sexist, misogynist, dangerous and racist in a now infamous disciplinary meeting with Wilfrid Laurier University teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd.
"So I think this is a warning, let’s say, to other careless administrators and professors who allow their ideological presuppositions to get the best of them to be a bit more careful with what they say and do," he said. Wilfrid Laurier University is where Ross Cressman sits
Confirming yesterday's post - nice to get one call right.
[WorldFootball.net] - Arab dismay - and jokes - after mass World Cup exit
No-one expected Egypt, Morocco or Saudi Arabia to win the World Cup but for all three to crash out on the same day was a disaster for Arab football.
Between them they have so far mustered no points, the tournament's biggest thrashing and just one goal -- and that was a penalty.
The only Arab team now with any hope is Tunisia, and they face the task of trying to beat a Belgium side who some tip to win the World Cup, after losing 2-1 to England in their first game.
Reaction was swift across the football-mad region after the losses on Wednesday.
Many fans took to social media to joke that they now knew what FIFA stood for -- "Football Is not For Arabs".
Or, as I call it, another paragraph in the CPA Full Employment Act!
[Zero Hedge] - The Supreme Court just overturned a 1992 ruling (which had limited online tax collections), thus freeing states and local governments to start collecting billions of dollars in sales taxes from internet retailers that don’t currently charge tax to their customers.
Specifically, SCOTUS upheld a law passed by South Dakota lawmakers in 2016 that requires out-of-state online sellers to collect the state’s sales taxes if the companies have more than $100,000 in annual sales of products to South Dakota residents or more than 200 separate transactions involving state.
Siding with states and traditional brick-and-mortar retailers on a 5-4 vote, Bloomberg reports that the court overturned a 1992 ruling that had made much of the internet a tax-free zone. That decision had shielded retailers from tax-collection duties if they didn’t have a physical presence in a state.
Delivering the opinion of the court, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the physical presence rule in that former case is unsound and incorrect. That 'physical presence' test used to be the basis of 'Quill v. North Dakota', which until now prevented states from collecting this specific sales tax.
#1
Amazon can afford the calculations, and remember, the local city and county add-ons. Mom and Pop shops, not so much. Goodbye eBay. This is like 'Net Neutrality', big boys can suck up the Netflix bandwidth hogging traffic. Little operations out in the boonies providing service, where the ROE doesn't attract the big boys, get killed by the bandwidth that is not pegged to the usage.
I think it is wrong because it crosses the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution and is subject to legislative determination, not judicial.
#6
Sales tax. In the Wi-Fi Age how do you determine if you are in a particular city's jurisdiction or no? Dollars to donuts this what the the big cities like NYC, or Seattle, are drooling at the thought of.
I don't get this. How can CA tax someone buying goods in another state? Isn't this like traditional mail order or a chain of shops, where you pay the tax to the state you're buying in?
Posted by: regular joe ||
06/21/2018 13:34
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#8
Joe, big cities have been actively pushing for this for years. When can we have a windfall tax on tax increases?
Oh, wonder who will deal with all the tax ids and exemptions they have now?
#10
So how do I know my paid state sales tax goes to my state? In a B&M I have a receipt, on the web I have a CC charge. Does 'Filters-R-Us' in North Carolina send my state fees to Texas?
#13
"I don't get this. How can CA tax someone buying goods in another state? Isn't this like traditional mail order or a chain of shops, where you pay the tax to the state you're buying in?"
Traditionally, a state's ability to legislate stops at its borders. You had to have a physical presence in the state. CA has been especially aggressive on this point. A company with a sales rep who lives in CA, or a customer in CA, is forced to file CA taxes even if the company itself has no presence there. This ruling potentially unleashed CA from even that low threshold. Say you work as a contractor for the local branch of a company based in CA. Say you are an accountant with a customer in CA, even though you live and are licensed in another state. Guess who gets to file CA tax returns from now on.
#14
I assume CA can only tax good bought or sold in CA. Not even Caliphornia could tax something sold in Maryland and delivered to Texas!
Besides, what other state besides SD has a law in place? Certainly, many states will rush to implement the new tax, but it'll take a while to decide how to divvy up the boodle.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/21/2018 16:39
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#15
I assume CA can only tax good bought or sold in CA.
Exactly right - I should've mentioned that in the original post.
#16
You *buy/download* an e-book while flying from CA to NY... Who gets the Sales Tax? CA-NV-CO...PA, or NY? Is it your home address? The corporate headquarters address of the seller?
#17
magpie - it would be the state of residence of the buyer - the fact that the purchase took place on a plane is not relevant. The tax authorities will look at the purchaser's address to determine what state's sales tax law applies on the purchase.
#18
This is nothing new then for CT, which has been taxing Amazon sales for some time. Their aggressive rape and pillaging of taxpayers is a primary reason the state is dying.
Posted by: Regular joe ||
06/21/2018 18:31
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#19
The "internet sales sites" roster includes Craigslist and EBay amongst others. Enforcing sales tax compliance here will be difficult to impossible. Widespread disrespect for compliance with one law leads to failure to comply with others. This is a short term gain for Amazon (increasing costs to marginal competitors) and long term loss to governments spending dollars to capture income measured in pennies
#20
more jobs and sales for low tax states and localities - more reasons for people to move away from the high tax places like NY City Chicago LA Seattle and San Francisco
#21
If you are sitting in CA and buy something on your computer it shouldn't really matter where the company you do business with is, you owe CA. That's the Supremes judgement I believe. Previously it was the opposite, no matter where you were it was where the company you do business with is situated was vital and where you were didn't matter.
[DallasNews] All you need is a friendly attitude and the desire to work hard ‐ plus, maybe, a healthy respect for really clean bathrooms ‐ to start earning as much as $15 an hour, with three weeks of paid time off and access to a 401k plan with up to 4 percent matched by your employer.
In this case, that would be Buc-ee’s. A Texas-size convenience/souvenir/anything-you-want store with 50-60 gas pumps and signs 50 miles away on the Interstate.
"We believe it’s very important to retain employees," said Jeff Nadalo, general counsel for the beloved chain of convenience stores. "And we believe that all employers that want to retain employees are offering benefits."
And just for you crumby Dems He’s not wrong, experts say.
As never-Trumper observers worry that a broad, nationwide labor shortage could put a damper on longer term growth, for right now, a tight labor market means employers in every corner of Texas’ churning economy are being forced to step up their compensation games.
It’s a shift that’s been playing out for years in corporate workplaces, where white-collar employers have been battling one another for top talent out of the region’s indoctrination centers universities. They’ve built new, high-tech offices and offered gourmet food and drinks, games and other amenities just to woo younger workers. Quality benefits packages have become a baseline.
But more recently, as unemployment hovers at historic lows, those fights for talent are spreading to other industries where workers have traditionally been paid lower hourly wages and benefits weren’t a certainty.
"It’s kind of the same story as what we’ve been hearing pretty consistently for the last few years," said Chris Slijk, an assistant economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. "Now, it’s becoming more intensified."
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/21/2018
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#1
Economy picks up, more people get employed or promoted, available labor pool shrinks, employers sweeten the deal to attract new hires...
It ain't rocket science but still the demoncrats either don't get it or want to ignore it to keep people dependent on the government.
#2
If everyone is employed a lot of the issues the left depends on to divide and conquer go away or seem super-silly to the point they have to invent crisis to really move people.
On the 6th June 2019 there are plans for a huge concert on Sword Beach in Normandy. 75k people are expected to turn up all paying £75 to see Sting et all.
They will be partying on the very ground that hundreds of men lost their lives 75 years before fighting for our freedom, where families have scattered ashes of loved ones who fought on that beach, and where returning veterans want to go but will be unable to.
An addition 75000 people in an already very busy area will become a liability.
Let them have their concert, but NOT on any of the beaches in Normandy and preferably NOT on the 6th June 2019.
[Daily Caller] Former President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity czar confirmed Wednesday that former national security adviser Susan Rice told him to "stand down" in response to Russian cyber attacks during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Michael Daniel, whose official title was "cybersecurity coordinator," confirmed the stand-down order during a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing held to review the Obama and President Donald Trump’s administrations’ policy response to Russian election interference.
Rice’s order to Daniel was first reported in "Russian Roulette," a book published in March that details Russia’s meddling in the election.
In the book, authors Michael Isikoff and David Corn reported that Daniel was developing strategies to respond to Russian cyber attacks on U.S. companies and political campaigns. He proposed using what’s known as denial of service attacks to take down Russian propaganda news sites and to attack Russian intelligence agencies.
#4
So, Susan "Benghazi" Rice was in favor of Russian meddling in our elections? The Dems did far more to corrupt the election process than the Russians could ever dream of.
[The Spokesman Review] Rachel Dolezal made her first public appearance in court Wednesday morning on accusations of stealing from the Washington welfare system.
It was the first time she’d seen a judge since being charged with two counts of felony fraud in late May.
Dolezal, who legally changed her name to Nkechi Diallo two years ago, pleaded not guilty again to both counts. Within minutes of entering the court room she was whisked away by her defense attorney, Bevan Maxey, to avoid television cameras.
Dolezal, 40, was thrust into the national spotlight in 2015, when it was revealed she was a white woman who for years passed herself off as black while serving as president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP. The controversy has spawned many news articles, a book deal and a recent Netflix documentary "The Rachel Divide."
As part of her release conditions, and because she was already out of custody, Spokane County Superior Court Judge James Triplet required Dolezal to check in July 2 to the Spokane County Jail, where she will be booked and photographed but not sent to a cell.
The state accuses Dolezal of illegally receiving about $9,000 in food assistance and $100 in child care assistance in 2017 all while failing to report her actual income, according to the Washington Department of Social and Health Services. If convicted, she would face a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison and could be ordered to repay the money.
Investigators say she made nearly $84,000 between August 2015 and September 2017, but despite this, she only reported a monthly income of $300 a month.
[Strategic Culture Foundation] Both President Trump and former President Obama are commonly said in America’s ’news’ media to be or to have been "ceding Syria to Russia" or "ceding Syria to Russia and Iran," or similar allegations. They imply that ’we’ own (or have some right to control) Syria. That’s not only a lie; it is a very evil and harmful one, dangerously goading the US President to go even more against Russia (and Iran) (and, of course, against Syria) than has yet been done ‐ but the ’news’media don’t care about that evil, and that falsehood, and that dangerousness ‐ they do it anyway, and none of them attacks the others for perpetrating this vicious war-mongering lie, that lying provocation to yet more and worse war than already exists there. And the fact that none is exposing the fraudulence of the others on this important matter, is a yet-bigger additional scandal, beyond and amplifying the media’s common lying itself. Because they all function here like a mob, goading to more and worse invasions, and doing it on the the basis of dangerous lies ‐ that America, and not the Syrians themselves, own Syria.
These lies simply assume that America (probably referring to the US Government, but whatever) somehow "has" or else "had" Syria (so that America can now ’cede’ it, to anyone); and this assumption (that the US somehow owns Syria) is not only an imperialistic one (which is bad, and wrong, in itself), but it reduces to nothingness the rights (in the minds of the American public) of the Syrian people, to control their own land. That lie is what America’s ’news’media won’t expose, but instead they all cooperate with it, when they’re not actually participating, themselves, in spreading these lies.
[Strategic Culture Foundation] Even before Donald Trump won the White House, there were strong indications that something was not quite right with the Liberal mindset. Today, all doubt on the matter has been cleared away.
The mass hysteria that swept across Liberal America, like one giant tear tsunami, following Hillary Clinton’s ’surprise’ loss in the 2016 presidential election has reached a new level of madness and can now be described as a deep-seated psychosis.
There are some understandable reasons for the Left’s collective mental breakdown. Briefly, ’Russiagate’ is disintegrating into a burlesque theater of the absurd, while Trump ‐ from jump-starting the Heartland’s industrial sector, to making peace with a nuclear-armed dictator, to ’winning’ the World Cup ‐ is on a serious roll. If the momentum continues, it may give the Republicans a crucial victory in November congressional midterms. The Democrats, acutely aware as to what is at stake yet unable to stop Trump, are showing a side of their character that can be best described as treacherous. And in order to see the symptoms of a disintegrating Democratic Party one only need look at the US entertainment industry.
For example, actor Robert DeNiro, one of the most outspoken Hollywood critics of Trump, forced his captive audience at the recent Tony Awards to sit through an invective against the US leader, which started with the juvenile comment, "F*ck Trump!" Just in case his audience - which may have included some minors, not to mention Republicans - did not hear him the first time, DeNiro repeated it. The pathetic outburst, which was certainly not the first time a fading Hollywood star has used the pulpit at an awards ceremony to make a weak political impression, won DeNiro a cheap standing ovation.
Back in January 2017, before Trump was even moved into Pennsylvania Avenue, actress Meryl Streep pulled a similar stunt, lecturing the president on the diverse composition of US society in general and Hollywood in particular: "Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners and if we kick them all out, you'll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts," Streep said, a comment that reinforces the idea that actors should just stick to their scripts instead of venturing into the minefield of politics.
#1
Quit using the word Liberal. There's nothing of classical liberalism in them. They're socialists. It's the same mindset as the geniuses running Caracas. They love themselves cause they believe they are god since they've thrown out the old one. They truly believe "Thou shalt have no other gods before me".
#2
Lots of noisy ones heading ever further left, but the quietly thoughtful ones are more and more dismayed by this behaviour — and withholding their vote from those running on this nonsense, even though they can’t bring themselves to vote Republican for all sorts of reasons.
But a vote not cast for the Democrats is just as valuable as a vote cast for the Republicans. Especially when the feds are encouraging the states to clean up their voter rolls and harden their voting procedures. November is going to be very interesting indeed,
#3
For example, actor Robert DeNiro, one of the most outspoken Hollywood critics of Trump, forced his captive audience at the recent Tony Awards to sit through an invective against the US leader...
That's a load of crap - no one was 'forced' to sit there; they all had the option to walk out. Whether or not any of them did, that was never reported.
Washed up producer/director/actor whose only claim to fame is his daddy's name seeks publicity by advocating violence against First Family.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
06/21/2018 10:10
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I seem to remember not that long ago all the very best people were darkly worried at the prospect that President Trump might simply go off in public, you know just start swearing incoherently at some world leader. Now it gets a standing ovation?
[Weekly Standard] Colorado is the national pioneer of legalized marijuana. In 2014, it became the first state to allow any adult over 21 to buy weed or grow it without fear of prosecution. Since then, eight others and the District of Columbia have legalized the drug, and, with a momentum that feels irreversible, more are heading that direction. Public opinion is rapidly shifting in favor of legalization. Coloradans approved marijuana sales in a referendum, with state leaders musing that it would be a grand experiment and an exercise in federalism that could be instructive for the rest of the country.
Nowhere are the results of this experiment being felt more than in Pueblo, a small city of 108,000 about two hours south of Denver. Pueblo is an old working-class steel town largely left out of the prosperity of Denver and the state’s famous ski resorts. With nearly 200 legal marijuana farms, Pueblo is at the forefront of the state’s rapidly expanding pot industry. Marijuana has become big business. It is creating jobs, harnessing the energies of young entrepreneurs, raising millions in new tax revenues, attracting visitors to town, and giving residents more personal freedom.
#4
And, if you are in the pot biz you can't put your money in the stock market or a bank. Nobody want's your money that the Feds can seize at any instant. It, also, puts all titles (land, car etc.) into the same distress. So, to be involved you want to rent. But if a landlord rents to you and (land or home) and drugs are involved the Feds can seize his assets so...
#5
Easy enough to become the banker for 'less legitimate' businesses. Buy a junkyard, build salvage title vehicles, sell them to trafficers. It's a prison town, lend money for bail bonds.
Setup a transit service for prison visitors. Open donut shops outside the prison entrances for the COs. Wash money.
[The Hill] Rising insulin costs are drawing outrage from diabetes advocates, leading to calls for greater transparency and federal oversight of the market for a drug that helps more than 7 million Americans.
Insulin was first discovered nearly 100 years ago, and as newer forms of the drug have been introduced, the price has climbed.
Three companies ‐ Eli Lilly, Sanofi and Novo Nordisk ‐ control 99 percent of the world’s insulin, and advocates have been asking them to explain their pricing. According to the American Diabetes Association, the average price of insulin nearly tripled between 2002 and 2013.
The price for a vial of one the most popular insulin brands, Humalog, increased from $21 in 1996, to $35 in 2001, to $234 in 2015, to $275 in 2017. There are no generic forms of insulin on the market, but there are some cheaper "biosimilar" versions.
"Americans need Congress to take action to ensure a vibrant, competitive insulin market that serves consumers instead of drug company CEOs. Insulin is not a luxury. It is required for life," said Ben Wakana, executive director of the advocacy group Patients for Affordable Drugs.
Insulin price spikes have also prompted scrutiny from members of both parties in Congress.
#2
That which should be going down in price, is going up. Strange, very strange.
Strange, indeed. And no generic form of a drug that's been around for a century? Stranger still. Call me whacky, but could there possibly be government regulations distorting the market?
#3
The free market failed a very long time ago. Investigate the 3 companies for antitrust violations - for starters. Fiddle with the laws on drug patents -- or even just "start a discussion". Ditto with laws on corporate existence vs. the common good. Nothing substantial will be done by our esteemed legislators, of that we can all be sure.
[Samuel Chamberlain | Fox News] The Trump administration will propose merging the Labor Department with the Education Department as part of a larger effort to reorganize the federal government, The Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday.
The formal announcement is planned for Thursday morning, but the Journal reports that any planned reorganization must be approved by Congress.
The reported proposal is a revival of long-held conservative ambitions dating back at least two decades. In the 1990s, Republican lawmakers proposed merging the Education and Labor departments with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The new agency would have been dubbed the Department of Education and Employment, but such plans never got off the ground.
According to the Journal, the Education Department is one of the smallest agencies of the federal government, with approximately 3,900 employees. The paper reports that its workforce has shrunk by 10 percent as the result of a hiring freeze instituted by President Trump soon after he took office.
The department was one of three government agencies Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry promised to eliminate during the 2012 campaign. The proposal was overshadowed when Perry, now the secretary of energy, forgot the name of one of the agencies during a televised debate.
The Labor Department has a reported 15,000 employees and has a variety of responsibilities, including compiling employment statistics and enforcing federal wage laws. By way of the WSJ
Posted by: Seeking Cure For Ignorance ||
06/21/2018
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#1
Before your time, there was Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) before the empires were built.
#5
Brilliant. You can make a lot of the bureaucracy go away without actually dissolving a federal agency. The latter has been tried in the past and always failed.
Posted by: Lone Ranger ||
06/21/2018
03:09 ||
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#1
Is plaintiff Gary J. Byrne the former Secret Service officer of the same name who wrote about serving in the Clinton White House? Breitbart interviewed him before the election.
#2
If you don't like reading at the SCRIBD site as I don't, here is an alternative cleaner copy: Non-SCRIBD Copy.
Byrne, a former uniformed SS officer and U.S. Air Marshall feels like he was wronged in a RICO criminal way, by the Clinton cabal.
Depending upon how far this case gets, it should be interesting to see what this case reveals. Byrne, a non-lawyer is dealing with a bunch of lawyers who have been at this much longer than him. Hopefully, he has some political connections and monied backing on this.
#4
for a private citizen to bring a RICO against the multiple defendants named, that citizen must show that he has been harmed and that the harm came from one of the defendants named
Mr Byrne alleges being pestered, insulted, ridiculed and slandered but I couldn't find any evidence that he suffered significant monetary or physical harm (its 200+ pages and I quit reading about about page 15)
Posted by: lord garth ||
06/21/2018 21:17
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[JP] The new US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, requested the German government to block Iran’s Mahan Air from flying within German airspace and deny it landing rights in the country because of the airline’s material support for terrorism.
In a meeting last week with a senior delegation from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Grenell said: "Here in Germany, I have asked the German government to support our efforts to stop an airline called Mahan Air from utilizing German airspace and airports. We know that Mahan Air has been used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] as a mode of transport for weapons, resources and fighters, so we’re asking our allies to help us put a stop to it."
Posted by: Besoeker ||
06/21/2018
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[American Thinker] For years ‐ decades, actually ‐ the Democrats have been facilitating the invasion of our country by millions of people who are from, as President Trump once reportedly described them, "s-hole countries." The constantly cited figure of "11 million illegal immigrants [sic]" is a joke. It has remained constant for more than a decade, while new waves of illegal immigrants arrive annually. There are more likely tens of millions of illegal aliens here.
In California, according to the L.A. Times, July 8, 2015, non-Hispanic whites are now in the minority, having been outnumbered by Latinos, AKA "people of color." Little of this profound demographic shift is a result of legal immigration. This recent wave of immigrants, coming from poor countries with repressive backward regimes, as a rule do not believe in the laws and the importance and supremacy of the founding documents of this country, including the Constitution.
#2
I think the article has things a bit off. In California whites are a minority but not less in numbers than Latinos. They are less in numbers compared to all other minorities. A majority minority is the term I've heard bandied about. Which is to say no big deal.
[BBC] It is the rock that has fortified Australia's recession-defying economy.
Iron ore has helped to raise living standards in the country, supercharge pension funds, and bankroll governments. It is the key ingredient of steel, and is Australia's most lucrative export.
Last year, the trade, mostly to China, as well as South Korea and Japan, was worth 63bn Australian dollars ($45bn; £35bn).
Over the past decade booming export volumes have soared by more than 200%. It is without doubt an economic colossus, and Australia is the world's largest exporter of iron ore. But given that global iron ore prices have fallen sharply over the past decade, should Australia try to move away from the sector?
The heart of iron ore extraction in Australia lies in the red, dry dirt of the Pilbara, a sparsely populated region in the north of Western Australia, more than 1,000km (621 miles) from Perth, the state capital.
[BBC] In his well-cut suit, with outstretched hand and beaming smile, Sibusiso Moyo is the very picture of a modern politician.
He speaks softly, smoothly and pauses to listen as if he had spent years on campaign trails listening to the supplications of constituents. His desk is covered with papers waiting to be read and signed.
We meet at the start of what will be another long day for Zimbabwe's foreign minister. Waiting in another room is the Russian trade delegation.
There will be more meetings after that for Mr Moyo: diplomats, civil servants, and the possibility that the phone on his desk will ring with a summons from President Emmerson Mnangagwa - whose office is five minutes away in another part of the building.
The president has declared Zimbabwe "open for business" and it is Mr Moyo's job to make sure investment starts to roll in. This is after all the "new" Zimbabwe. But perhaps "newish" would be a better description.
After all, the president was for decades a loyal supporter of former leader Robert Mugabe, whom he ousted last November after 37 years in power.
Former generals who were all complicit in Mugabe's era of oppression now occupy key positions in the Mnangagwa cabinet.
In his previous incarnation, Foreign Minister Moyo was Maj-Gen Moyo and commanded army operations in the provinces during past elections.
DULUTH, Minn. (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said North Korea had returned on Wednesday the remains of 200 U.S. troops missing from the Korean War, although there was no official confirmation of the move from military authorities.
"We got back our great fallen heroes, the remains sent back today, already 200 got sent back," Trump told a crowd of supporters during a rally in Duluth, Minnesota.
U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Tuesday that in coming days North Korea would hand over a "sizeable number" of remains to United Nations Command in South Korea, and they would then be transferred to Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii.
Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at a historic summit last week in Singapore, and said in a news conference afterwards that Kim had agreed to return the remains of U.S. soldiers.
#6
I predict the Pueblo *will* be returned. Pudge will offer it as a gesture of friendship, new era between our countries, blah blah blah. Donny will graciously offer to come and pick it up to save his pal Pudge the shipping expense.
As a practical matter, how do you get it back? I'm guessing the Norks have skimped on maintenance so you can't just change the oil, weigh anchor and drive it home. Heavy lift ship?
I'm sure our Navy divers have a plan on file, one that will involve at least a year to complete and an aircraft carrier group stationed nearby for support. ;-)
[Wash Times] Senators voted Wednesday to block President Trump’s $15.4 billion spending cuts package, with lawmakers saying it trimmed the budget too much.
Brushing aside administration promises that the cuts were chiefly to money that was never going to be spent, the Senate voted 50-48 to keep the bill bottled up. Two Republicans ‐ Susan Collins of Maine and Richard Burr of North Carolina ‐ joined Democrats to defeat the package.
The vote was a blow to Republicans who had promised more fiscal responsibility after passing a $1.5 trillion tax cut last year followed by a $1.3 trillion spending bill in March.
Mr. Trump, stung by criticism after signing the spending bill, vowed to return with cuts.
But with Congress already working on the 2019 spending bills, Democrats said any moves to lower government funding would sour the chances for bipartisan cooperation.
#4
would sour the chances for bipartisan cooperation
Now THAT'S funny!
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/21/2018 9:47
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#5
Two Pubs, Burr and Collins didn't vote for the bill. Two abstained from voting, probably Flake and McCain.
How much money routinely disappears across various agencies? For example, how much money disappears due to fraud and corruption in Medicare/Medicaid, SS, and welfare? There's much room for improvement.
#6
Flake needs to move on and resign now, McCain needs to hurry up and resign or die. Get real conservative in there. And McConnel and Cornyn the swamp turtle twins, they need to retire or be primaried HARD.
[Right Scoop] For those of us who have been clamoring for Trump to act more like a conservative, we just got great news.
He has a major plan to consolidate the government:
The White House plans to propose merging the Departments of labor and education as part of a broader reorganization of the federal government, said a person with knowledge of the proposal.
An announcement is planned for Thursday morning, after a monthslong review of cabinet agencies with an eye toward shrinking the federal government.
Wow. That’s pretty yuge. The WSJ doesn’t think it has much of a chance of success:
The reorganization would require approval from Congress, but it’s not clear that lawmakers have the appetite to undertake a far-reaching reorganization, especially at this point in the political calendar.
Lawmakers have shown reluctance to embrace such plans in the past, and Congress has limited time for major legislation before the November midterm elections. Previous proposals to eliminate agencies, including the departments of education and energy, have made little headway.
Streamlining the executive branch has been a longtime conservative goal. The new plan also meshes with the administration’s priority of retooling higher-education programs to train students more directly to join the workforce.
BUT, if Trump can summon his much vaunted negotiating power and get this through, he will definitely garner praise from us who just want the government to be smaller and smaller.
[PJ] One of the Democratic Socialists who hounded Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen out of a D.C. Mexican restaurant Tuesday night is a current employee of the Department of Justice, it has been confirmed.
About a dozen members of the D.C. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) crashed Nielsen’s meal, wielding pro-illegal immigrant placards and chanting "shame!"
"Kirstjen Nielsen, you’re a villain, locking up immigrant children," the activists shriek in the video. "The f*ing gall. Shame on you. Sham, shame, shame, fascist pig!"
Allison Hrabar, who works for the Trump administration as a paralegal in the DOJ, was among the unhinged DSA mob. Another Trump administration employee initially tipped off The Daily Caller about Hrabar's presence at the protest.
#1
...From a purely legal 1A standpoint, there may not be much that can be done to this little angel. If she did this on her down time and she did nothing to identify herself as a DOJ employee, she's in the clear.
[Hot Air] With the heat of the summer upon us, the murder rate in Baltimore, Maryland is once again climbing back up. Still not as bad as the previous two years, but it was a late spring and the gangs have started making up for lost time. This past weekend five people were killed and seven more injured in various shootings around the city. Knowing that things are only going to get worse as we move into July and August, the Police Commissioner and the Mayor announced this week that a "summer surge" of law enforcement was coming and they are requesting help from federal agencies to battle "the worst of the worst" among Charm City’s violent criminal element.
#6
"...Keep in mind, however, that anything the Federal Government could realistically do to make the situation better isn't wanted. Just send money - graft don't steal itself, ya know."
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
06/21/2018 9:25
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#7
Is black Mussolini girl still in charge of the prosecutor's office?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
06/21/2018 9:50
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#8
Yep. New Mayor and Police Chief. Same tribals
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/21/2018 9:53
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#9
One solution to the murder problem is to kill a whole bunch of people.
[RUSH] Okay, folks, I’m just gonna say it here. If the media keeps this up ‐ if they keep up generating this hysteria ‐ somebody’s gonna get killed. I think we’re pretty close to somebody getting killed already, and I’m not being hyperbolic, and I’m not trying to call attention to myself. I’m genuinely worried about the out-of-control aspect of this. The news media’s fanning the flames. The news media is leading the way on this. It’s again an oxymoron. News media? There is no media, and none of this is news.
It’s a manufactured crisis ‐ that is one of many ‐ after Donald Trump committed an unpardonable sin ‐ and that was winning the presidential election. This today is not about kids and the way they’re being treated anywhere. This is about Donald Trump winning and these people not being able to do anything about it. Look at everything they’ve thrown at Trump. They’ve had full-blown intelligence community FBI, CIA, DOJ, special counsel investigations all happening simultaneously designed to drive Donald Trump from office in six months.
#2
...until it turns on them. Their protestations will be far too late. The civil war is coming. Once they light the fire, no amount of 'talk' will stop it.
#4
I don't think that they're really this organized, but:
This turns into a no lose situation for the leftists.
(1) If the dead person is on the right, they cackle about 'had it coming' and use it to wave the red flag.
(2) If the dead person is on the left, let's say killed while attacking someone on the right, the creep becomes a martyr, and maybe the next argument in the gun control wars.
Remember, If it bleeds, it leads.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
06/21/2018 9:33
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#5
Won't be Trumps campaign manager. The left locked hïm up and put him ion solitary confinement even though he has not been convicted of a crime.
The left storm troopered Trumps attorny so he is nuetralized with having him shot.
[National Review] According to a new textbook written by a professor at the University of Exeter, learning mathematics can cause "collateral damage" to society because it "provides a training in ethics-free thought."
"Reasoning without meanings provides a training in ethics-free thought," Paul Ernest writes in "The Ethics of Mathematics: Is Mathematics Harmful?" ‐ a chapter of his book The Philosophy of Mathematics Education Today.
In an abstract for the book, Ernest claims that although he does "acknowledge that mathematics is a widespread force for good," "there is significant collateral damage caused by learning mathematics."
According to Ernest, this "collateral damage" happens in three ways. First, he argues, the styles of thinking involved with mathematics are "detached" and "calculated" ones, which value "rules, abstraction, objectification, impersonality, unfeelingness, dispassionate reason, and analysis" ‐ which he claims "can be damaging when applied beyond mathematics to social and human issues."
The second problem, he explains, is that "the applications of mathematics in society can be deleterious to our humanity unless very carefully monitored and checked."
#9
If the education system is morphed into the form of military academy-like institutions where a 'group-think' is indoctrinated instead of classical liberal arts...
Wait a minute, does that sound like Evergreen College, or UC Berkeley?
#12
Met a young man with a Physics degree from Evergreen College. Talk about bitter. He is so so pissed off that now nobody will take him seriously just because the leftist professors in the humanities departments went insane.
[Townhall] First Lady Melania Trump’s office confirmed to The Daily Caller Wednesday that they have notified the Secret Service about actor Peter Fonda’s suggestion, in a series of since-deleted vulgar tweets, that Barron Trump should be kidnapped.
“The tweet is sick and irresponsible and USSS has been notified,” spokesperson for the first lady Stephanie Grisham told The Daily Caller.
Fonda also promoted horrific violence against DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and called for the kidnapping of White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders's children.
Fonda also called for the public harassment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, including harassing their children at school.
A rep for Fonda told Fox that the actor "wanted to make sure that Melania and Ivanka communicate with the president the dire circumstances of separating mothers and young children."
[The Hill] President Trump is expected to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin next month during Trump’s scheduled trip to Europe, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.
The plans are not final, sources told Bloomberg. However, the meeting could take place either before the July 11 NATO summit in Belgium or after Trump visits the United Kingdom on July 13.
The White House declined to comment to Bloomberg.
A potential meeting between Trump and Putin has reportedly been in the works for several weeks. However a potential date and location had not been previously reported.
Despite his claims that no administration has been tougher on Russia than his own, Trump has drawn criticism since taking office for not speaking out more forcefully against Putin, particularly in the wake of the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia attempted to influence the 2016 presidential election in Trump's favor.
[Breitbart] President Donald Trump ridiculed a leftist protester at his rally in Duluth, Minnesota who had his long hair done up in a man-bun. The protester shouted and waved around a photo of Trump before supporters ripped the sign out of his hands.
"Go home to your mom, darling. Go home," Trump said. "Get him out of here." As he was escorted out of the arena, Trump continued.
"Was that a man or a woman? Because he needs a haircut more than I do," Trump said. "I couldn’t tell! I couldn’t tell!"
[Breitbart] Mark Smith uses his new book, #Duped: How the Anti-gun Lobby Exploits the Parkland School Shooting‐and How Gun Owners Can Fight Back, to highlight the left’s overarching goal of creating a gun-free world.
He also uses the book to explain how gun owners can fight back and actually defeat the left and their freedom-crushing endeavors.
Smith was a guest on the June 19 episode of Bullets with AWR Hawkins and he gave a quick synopsis of gun owners’ path to victory. He began with a rational comparison of gun crime in the United State versus countries that have stringent gun control:
The countries of the Western hemisphere ... if we compare the violence and murder rates of the United States and all the Latin American, Central American, South American countries, almost all of which are basically gun-free zones ... Mexico only has a single gun store in the country. Yet if you look at the crime and the murder rates compared to the United States, which has lots of guns, when these other South American, Central American countries which have no private gun ownership rights for all intents and purposes, guess what, we’re the safest country in the Western hemisphere, when you compare us to all the those other countries to our South. But no one wants to talk about that on the other side.
He goes into greater detail in his book, but his point is clear‐gun laws do not prevent criminals from using guns to commit crime.
[The Strategist - OZ) With Abu Sayyaf already on the back foot, and many of its leaders moving to mainland Mindanao, Hataman capitalised by mobilising Basilan’s society. Muslim religious leaders, who had been scared of violent reprisals, now felt safe enough to publicly denounce Abu Sayyaf. The business sector, long crippled by pervasive extortion, threw its support behind the Hataman plan.
With violence decreasing, the provincial government was able to expand public services into the remote regions that had once been Abu Sayyaf’s stronghold. The government’s action also signalled that it was committed to and capable of providing services to the population, which bolstered its legitimacy.
Nothing guarantees that the drop in violence in Basilan will continue. On the contrary: the concentration of power will dissipate and martial law will hopefully end. But Basilan’s stabilisation gives insights into how to reduce the levels of violence in other parts of Mindanao.
Extremist groups grow strong when they infiltrate and co-opt local governments and leaders. Convincing those leaders to side with the forces of peace rather than violence is essential. In Basilan, this didn’t involve changing their ideology because few supported the extremist ideas of Abu Sayyaf.
Some felt it was in their political interests to maintain cordial relations with the group, and many gave it sanctuary simply because they were too scared to refuse. In short, ridding Basilan of Abu Sayyaf wasn’t about changing the ideology of local leaders as much as changing their incentives.
Basilan still suffers from far too much violence, and creating a more permanent peace is a generational challenge. Reconstructing the infrastructure and social fabric of Marawi is a similar challenge. But Basilan’s recent stabilisation demonstrates that provincial governments endowed with sufficient political power and sustained political commitment can, at least temporarily, reduce violence.
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Salahuddin (Iraqinews.com) – A group of Islamic State (IS) militants stormed a village in Salahuddin governorate and kidnapped a farmer there, a security source was quoted as saying Wednesday.
“IS terrorists attacked late Tuesday Wadi al-Safa village in al-Shirqat district and kidnapped a farmer from a local tribe there,” the source told Iraqi website Shafaaq.
“The militants seized a truck as well,” the source pointed out.
Salahuddin (IraqiNews.com) A local tribe in Salahuddin province has announced killing three Islamic State members, who attempted infiltrating into villages north of the province.
In a statement on Wednesday, Shammar tribe said tribal fighters “managed today to kill three Islamic State members who tried to sneak into villages of Teloul al-Baj, north of Salahuddin.”
The members, according to the statement, “were planning for kidnapping, but the tribal fighters are still following the members who ran away.”
Posted by: trailing wife ||
06/21/2018
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[Khaama (Afghanistan)] Several forces of Evil were killed during the artillery and Arclight airstrikes carried out by the Afghan armed forces in the vicinity of Sayad district in northern Sari Pul province.
The Ministry of Defense of Afghanistan (MoD) said Wednesday that the latest artillery and airstrikes left at least 16 forces of Evil dead.
The source further added that at least 11 forces of Evil also sustained injuries and their five cycle of violences along with some weapons and munitions were destroyed.
The 209th Shaheen Corps of the Afghan military in the North had said earlier that the artillery and airstrike have left at least six forces of Evil dead while six others have sustained injuries.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[All Africa] The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) yesterday said plans were at advanced stages in preparation for the first in its three-stage referendum process towards the peaceful and non-violent restoration of the nation of Biafra. Jock Ojukwu returned with help?
It said its decision to hold the first of the three plebiscites later this year had vindicated its resilience in sticking to the principles of non-violent agitation for Biafra in the face of government brutality and treachery from enemies within. Is this fifty year old news?
In a statement signed by its Publicity Secretary, Emma Powerful and made available to The Guardian in Enugu, the IPOB said efforts geared towards the first referendum was gathering unstoppable momentum, adding that the dates for the exercise would be announced shortly. How about the picture of the poor little kid with the vulture sitting next to him, waiting for him to peg out?
The statement said: "Forty million ballot papers are being printed and readied for distribution to every clan and village in Biafraland for all adults over the age of 18 to express their preference. And then it'll be all over but the shootin'.
"Through this age-old democratic process, IPOB shall return power to the long-suffering down-trodden masses to enable them determine their destiny. This massive consultation exercise will guide all future IPOB activities and hopefully address the issue of lack of wider participation by the people, which some Nigerian government agents within have often cited as their reason for working against the emergence of Biafra. History doesn't repeat itself. It barfs itself up.
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[PREMIUMTIMESNG] Suspected members of Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... on Monday attacked Gajiram town in Borno State.
According to the police, the Death Eaters arrived in 11 gun trucks but were repelled by a combined team of security forces.
"Terrorists in 11 Gun Trucks Attack Gajiram Town On Monday’s evening at about 1740hrs, heavily armed Boko Haram terrorist in about eleven gun trucks attacked Gajiram town, headquarters of Nganzai Local Government Area.
"Police personnel deployed to the area alongside troops of the Nigerian Military engaged the Death Eaters and promptly repelled the attack," the Borno police spokesperson, Edet Okon, said in a statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES by PRNigeria, a news agency with close ties to security forces.
Mr Okon said there was no casualty on the side of the police. He, however, was silent on civilian casualty or those of the military.
"Meanwhile, ...back at the precinct house, Sergeant Maloney wasn't buying it. It was just too pat. The whole thing smelled phony, kind of like a dead mackeral but without the scales... reinforcement has been mobilised and deployed to the town. Further development will be communicated to the press in due course," he said.
Borno is the state most affected by the Boko Haram insurgency that has caused the death of tens of thousands of people since 2009.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[ALMASDARNEWS] Another high ranking jihadist commander was assassinated by unknown assailants in the Aleppo Governorate of northern Syria this month.
A high ranking commander from Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham was assassinated in rural Aleppo on Wednesday, the jihadist group’s media wing reported.
Abu Ahmad Sharoukh was reportedly assassinated on Wednesday, when a group of unknown assailants opened fire on his vehicle in the al-Muhandiseen area of west Aleppo.
The jihadist commander was known for preparing and planning boom-mobileings against the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in the Aleppo Governorate.
Sharoukh was said to have carried out at least 20 boom-mobileings against the Syrian Arab Army in Aleppo before his liquidation this week.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[ALMASDARNEWS] The Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're 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 the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS) activated their sleeper cells inside the Idlib Governorate, tonight, targeting several areas controlled by the jihadist rebels of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham .
According to pro-opposition activists, the Islamic State began their massive assault by targeting Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s positions around the town of Baliyoun, which is just south of Ariha.
The pro-opposition activists added that the Islamic State took full control of Baliyoun after killing more than ten Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham fighters inside and outside this small Idlib Governorate town.
Meanwhile, ...back at the argument, Jane reached into her purse for her .38... in northeast Idlib, the Islamic State began storming Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s checkpoints near the strategic town of Saraqib.
Intense festivities are now ongoing outside of Saraqib and several other towns inside the Idlib Governorate; this is considered the largest attack by the Islamic State since their brief offensive in 2017.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[ATimes] The Widodo government is concerned about the growth of religious intolerance; indeed three universities are under increased surveillance because of high levels of support for religious extremism.
Radical Islam’s penetration of Indonesia’s universities has alarmed President Joko Widodo’s government, providing further evidence that evolving religious conservatism and intolerance is changing the character of society nearly two decades after the birth of democratic rule.
National Intelligence Agency (BIN) director Budi Gunawan recently released the results of a 2017 survey showing that 39% of university students in 15 of Indonesia’s 34 provinces reject democracy and the pluralistic concepts of Pancasila, the state ideology.
Despite an overwhelming majority favoring democracy in other polls, the survey also found that 24% of college students and more than 23% of high school pupils supported violent jihad as a means to transform the world’s largest Muslim nation into an Islamic state.
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) The Iraqi military intelligence announced killing two Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're 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 the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... members and foiling an attempt to blow a mosque, west of Anbar.
In a statement on Wednesday, the department said troops of the 29th brigade of the seventh division managed today to foil an attempt to plant bombs near al-Sedeeq mosque in Hit town, west of Anbar.
Moreover, the department added that troops "managed, after thwarting the attempt, to arrest two Islamic State members who were going to carry out a terrorist attack."
Posted by: trailing wife ||
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Nineveh (IraqiNews.com) The Nineveh Operations Command has denied news on selling the dead bodies of Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're 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 the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... members in return for money.
In a presser on Wednesday, Maj. Gen. Najm al-Jabouri, the commander, said the news circulated by some media channels," which he described as ’yellow journalism’ over selling corpses of Islamic State leaders in return for huge amounts of money are untrue.
Jabouri urged the ’yellow media’ in djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... to stop circulating the untrue news and stick to accuracy.
Last week, news reports quoted sources as saying that some teams and volunteers working on extracting dead bodies from the Old City in Mosul have been confirmed to have sold Islamic State krazed killers’ corpses to their relatives for between USD2000 and USD5000.
[AlAhram] Kurdish forces of Evil fired on military vehicles in southeast The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... on Wednesday, killing two soldiers and wounding another, the local governor's office said, in the latest of a series of attacks.
Turkey's armed forces later said its warplanes had carried out air strikes in northern Iraq, killing 10 forces of Evil in the Avasin-Basyan and Sinat Haftanin areas and destroying weapon stores and shelters.
The incidents come ahead of nationwide elections on Sunday. There has been a wave of Ottoman Turkish air strikes on Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) bases in northern Iraq, especially its stronghold in the Qandil mountain region.
"Members of the separatist terror group carried out a rocket attack in which two military personnel were martyred and one maimed," the Hakkari provincial governor's office said, using Ankara's term for the PKK.
The attack on Wednesday morning targeted military vehicles leaving a hillside base in Cukurca district of the province, on the border with Iraq, it said.
Ankara has warned it might launch a ground offensive into the Qandil region, where high-ranking PKK members are believed to be based. President Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to "drain the terror swamp" there.
Erdogan said on Wednesday Turkey had carried out two air operations targeting Qandil, the second of which had struck a meeting of PKK commanders.
"We dealt with a team of their leaders that was meeting in Qandil," Erdogan said during a campaign rally in the southeastern province of Sanliurfa. He did not provide further details or say when the strikes occurred.
On Tuesday, three Ottoman Turkish soldiers were killed in kabooms blamed on the PKK in the southeastern provinces of Siirt and Sirnak.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... ’s King Salman ...either the largest species of Pacific salmon or the current Sheikh of the Burnin' Sands, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and Lord of Most of the Arabians.... has said that he was closely following with great interest the recent ceasefire agreed upon between the Afghan government and Taliban ...Arabic for students... during the recent Eid al-Fitr holidays, and expressed his wishes for the truce to continue for a longer period of time.
" The King of the Arabians, Sheikh of the Burning Sands, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques , King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, may God protect him, has followed with great interest the truce reached by the Afghan government and Taliban movement during the days of Eid El Fitr, expressing - may God support him - his pleasure over this blessed step and his support for it, hoping that it will be renewed and built upon for a longer period so that all parties can work together to achieve peace for the Afghan people," the statement said.
He added that the "Afghan people, who have suffered so much from the horrors of war, and the Islamic world with them, are looking forward to turning the page of the past and to open a new page based on tolerance and reconciliation, renouncing violence and preserving the lives of innocent people based on the great Islamic teachings that call for rejecting division, and for cooperation for righteousness and piety, and forgiveness and reconciliation among the brothers."
"The King asked Almighty God to bring success to the Afghan brothers in achieving what is best for their country, and to reconcile them and to bring about security and stability to the Islamic Theocratic Republic of Afghanistan and its dear people, which He is able to do, " the statement concluded.
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[StrategyPage] A group of Pakistani hackers, who specialize in surveillance software for parents to track their children (or a spouse) was apparently hired by the Pakistani intelligence agency (ISI, or Inter Service Intelligence agency) to create spyware (Stealth Mango for Android and Tangelo for IOS) versions and then help distribute it to some key government officials and civilians in Afghanistan, India, Iraq, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan using Facebook Messenger. This approach uses a lot of “social engineering” as the hackers must contact the target individuals and persuade them to download an app that pretends to be something other than spyware. Most targeted individuals are either not interested or don’t trust the offer. The most secure (resistant to this spyware) cell phone was the iPhone and the spyware would only work on the small number of iPhones that that had been modified (“jailbroken”) to run apps that did not come from the Apple App Store. As usual, the Android phones were much more vulnerable. In any event, it appears that only about a dozen people were persuaded to install the app. That, it turned out, was enough key people to collect a lot of important data.
The Stealth Mango/Tangelo effort was another intelligence-gathering operation that, in this case, collected a lot of sensitive data about American and Australian military and diplomatic activities. Collecting and transmitting the data (without the phone owner being aware) was how Stealth Mango/Tangelo was discovered (by an Australian Internet security company) in early 2018. Stealth Mango/Tangelo needed a lot of permissions on the infected phone in order to work and mostly went after data (documents and photos) as well as messages, location and contact lists. At least 40 GB of material was stolen from the infected phones by the hackers before Google and Apple were informed and victims were notified and the spyware was disabled. But it will be back. Actually, this sort of spyware has been around for quite a while and the latest ISI use of it was just another example.
Moreover, this sort of thing is not unusual for the ISI as Pakistan and India have been using the Internet to spy on each other for decades. Even before the Internet became widely available in the late 1990s there was an ongoing "war" between Indian and Pakistani hackers. Most of this has been little more than vandalism (defacing web pages and the like), but there have been some more serious hacks. It was these nationalistic hackers
Another fun fact is that Pakistan has always had the largest software developer and hacker community of any Moslem country. Early on Pakistan developed a large, and growing, software development industry of its own. In fact, the first known computer virus, the "Brain Virus" was written by Pakistani programmers in the late 1980s. "Brain" was created to help protect software a Pakistani firm had created and was selling, from pirating (illegal copies). But, instead, the Brain virus got out of control, and the rest is history. Pakistan has a lot of homegrown talent for their computer crime operations, and the ISI, to recruit from.
Posted by: 3dc ||
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Mars Storm Watch: The dust storm now circles the planet. No signal yet from Opportunity, but no response is expected until skies begin to clear. We continue to listen daily. https://t.co/VwuuPwEpPApic.twitter.com/8q7lDoezxs
[the Aviationist] Space May Be the “Final Frontier” Of a New Global Conflict Among Superpowers.
U.S. President Donald Trump launched a thousand memes when he announced the creation of a new military branch, a “U.S. Space Force” during a meeting of the National Space Council at the White House on Monday, June 18, 2018. The President told reporters that the new U.S. Space Force would become the sixth branch of the military to exist alongside but separately from the Air Force, Army, Marines, Navy and Coast Guard.
While President Trump’s announcement was received with humor and cynicism across social media, the formation of a U.S. military space force separate from and in addition to the existing five military branches is a credible and potentially overdue evolution for the U.S. military.
Since the first satellite, Sputnik 1, was placed in orbit by the former Soviet Union on October 4, 1957 over 8,000 objects have been launched into space. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists in a 2017 report, there were 1,738 operational satellites orbiting the earth at various altitudes broken into four categories; Low Earth Orbit, Medium Earth Orbit, Elliptical and Geosynchronous. Of those satellites, 159 are registered as “military” while an additional 150 are “government”. There are over 470 civilian satellites in orbit that provide everything from weather reconnaissance to communications.
Any disruption in vital space capabilities such as the six different national GPS constellations in orbit would have vast security and economic implications and present a significant vulnerability. Currently the U.S., Japan, Russia, China, the E.U. and India have GPS satellite constellations in orbit. These satellite constellations provide both vital commercial and military services ranging from civilian air transport to banking.
Head to article for remainder of the story. The site is really really incredibly SLOW TO LOAD.
[Al Jazeera] Yemen's Houthi ...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 Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. 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 ... rebels have vowed to fight on after pro-government forces seized Hudaida airport from them on Wednesday, in a major step towards retaking the port city following a week-long battle.
Rebel leader Abdulmalik al-Houthi called for reinforcements to repel the advance of the Saudi and UAE-backed government forces, after ongoing fighting left nearly 350 people dead.
"We will face all of the incursions on the ground. Our determination will never be dented," he said via the rebels' al-Masirah news outlet.
Saudi-Emirati coalition forces announced the capture of Hudaida airport on Wednesday morning, a day after breaking through the perimeter fence.
The airport was disused but it housed a major rebel base just inland from the coastal road into the city from the south.
Fresh festivities later erupted between UAE-backed government forces and the Iran-allied rebels on a road linking the airport to Hudaida port on the Red Sea coast, a Yemeni army source said.
Yemeni President Abdrabbo Mansour Hadi said military "operations will continue on various fronts until (the capital) Sanaa and the whole territory" are retaken from the rebels.
On June 13, Yemen's army and its allies launched their offensive to clear Hudaida of rebel fighters who have held it since 2014, raising UN concerns for vital aid shipments and food imports through the city's docks.
The coalition has long accused Iran of smuggling weapons into Yemen through the seaport - accusations that are rejected by the Houthis and Tehran.
UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash said the "liberation of Hudaida is the beginning to ending the war.
"The choice in Yemen is between the state and militia, between order and violence, between peace and war," he wrote on Twitter, referring to Huthi militiamen.
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#1
"We will fight to our last martyr succumb to his horrific wounds!"
"Hokay"
Posted by: Frank G ||
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[Bangkok Post] A leading member of an militant group operating in Narathiwat province was killed in a gun battle with soldiers at a house he was using as a hideout in Kapho district of Pattani early on Wednesday morning.
The house was targeted and surrounded by a combined team of paramilitary rangers and security officers. They were acting on information it was used as a safe house by rebels. They spotted Sulaiman Muhama, who was wanted in a security case, inside
the house. As they moved in to arrest him, Sulaiman opened fire. In the following clash, Sulaiman was killed.
Sulaiman was known among insurgents as "Porsu" and was an operational leader of a group operating in Rueso district of Narathiwat.
Authorities said Sulaiman was held responsible for a string of violent attacks in southern Thailand.
[IsraelTimes] Local government calls for residents to keep bomb shelters ready in case of renewed rocket, mortar fire, after terror groups in Strip launch 45 projectiles
The army deployed additional Iron Dome missile defense systems in southern Israel on Wednesday, after terror groups in the Gazoo Strip launched dozens of rockets and mortar shells earlier in the day.
Residents of the area were encouraged to go about their daily lives as usual, but to also prepare themselves for the possibility of another round of violence.
Schools opened as usual on Wednesday, following the rocket and mortar attacks earlier that morning, though teachers led special sessions to speak with students about what had happened. Parents were also given the option to not send their child to school, though few did. Over 90 percent of students attended classes on Wednesday, according to an Eshkol spokesperson.
The flare-up in the early hours of Wednesday morning could be traced to a number of incendiary and explosive kites and balloons that were flown into Israeli territory throughout the day on Tuesday.
These types of kite and balloon attacks have become a regular occurrence in the Gazoo periphery in recent weeks, sparking hundreds of fires that have burned thousands of acres of farmland, forests and national parks, causing millions of shekels in damages.
In an effort to force the Hamas, the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood, terrorist group to rein in the Paleostinians launching these airborne arson devices, the military conducted a round of Arclight airstrikes in the Strip shortly after midnight, hitting three Hamas positions.
In response to the Israeli air raid, Hamas and the Iran-backed 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... launched nearly 50 rockets and mortar shells at southern Israel over the course of nearly five hours, ending just before six in the morning.
At least eight projectiles went kaboom! inside Israeli communities, causing damage but no injuries, including one that hit just outside a kindergarten. Seven of them struck in the Eshkol region, while the eight landed in a kibbutz in the Sha’ar Hanegev region, according to local government officials.
Seven projectiles were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system, and three fell short of the border and landed inside Gazoo, the army said. The rest appeared to have fallen in open fields.
The Israeli military does not believe that Hamas is directly behind the incendiary kites and balloons that have wreaked havoc in southern Israel, but sees that the group is supporting the practice. In general, the IDF also holds Hamas responsible for any violence emanating from the Strip.
"We see an effort made by Hamas to encourage and enhance the production and launching of these kites," IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told news hounds Wednesday.
"It might have started spontaneously, but as Hamas saw the damage caused on the Israeli side, it has taken this offensive effort under its control and actively promotes it," he said.
Hamas, meanwhile, blamed Israel for Wednesday’s exchange, accusing it of trying to "change the rules of engagement" by adopting the policy of carrying out strikes on its facilities in response to arson attacks from the Strip.
This standoff, with each side blaming the other for the flare-up, raised concerns that the security situation in the Gazoo Strip could deteriorate into full-blown war.
"We can’t know how it ends, when it ends, but it looks like we are on the way to an escalation," Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz told Hadashot news on Wednesday night.
Three Paleostinians were lightly injured during the attacks in the early hours of Wednesday, residents said. The exchange was one of the most intense recent barrages of rocket fire and air strikes.
No casualties were reported in Israel. Air raid sirens and Israeli phone warning applications sounded throughout the predawn hours.
While Hamas praised the rocket attacks from Gazoo into Israel on Wednesday, it did not take responsibility for them.
Hamas front man Fawzi Barhoum said it was time for new rules of engagement, where "bombing is met with bombing".
"It's the Israeli occupation that started the escalation.The resistance has warned against continuing to target civilians, fishermen, farmers, and resistance positions.
"It's time to ... present new rules of engagement: bombing is met with bombing. Whoever began the escalation should be responsible for the consequences.
"The resistance is not interested in a new war at all, but we always want to defend the Paleostinian people.
"The peaceful demonstrations in all forms will continue on the eastern border and the Paleostinian resistance will be ready to protect Paleostinian civilians and defend them."
In a joint statement, the military wings of Hamas and allied Islamic Jihad said late Wednesday that they had “targeted seven Israeli military positions near Gaza… in response to continued Israeli aggression against resistance sites in Gaza.”
On Wednesday afternoon, the IDF fired warning shots near a cell dispatching incendiary balloons in the southern Gazoo Strip. There were no reports of injuries.
According to an IDF statement, the Air Force struck a total of 25 Hamas, the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood, targets across the Gazoo Strip in three waves. Eleven targets were attacked in the last wave "in four military compounds of the Hamas terror organization, including an underground training facility."
#1
Hamas, meanwhile, blamed Israel for Wednesday’s exchange, accusing it of trying to "change the rules of engagement" by adopting the policy of carrying out strikes on its facilities in response to arson attacks from the Strip.
Well...yeah. You claim to control Gazoo? Then do it
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/21/2018 8:49
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When they move up the artillery we'll know it's escalated.
The poor darlings. It looks like all those confiscated Gulenist properties weren’t enough to keep the train rolling after all.
[ATimes] What happens next may look like Greece during its financial collapse – meaning Turkey’s economy could shrink by 10%-20%
The Turkish central bank managed to halt the free-fall of the country’s currency last week with a sharp rise in interest rates. But the move failed to stop the free-fall of Turkey’s equity market and – far more dangerous – the collapse of the credit quality of Turkey’s banks. Only last October, the euro-denominated 10-year bond of Turkey’s largest private lender, Garanti Bank, yielded just 3%. Now it yields more than 7%, and the dollar value of the bond has fallen from over 120 euros to around 80 euros.
Turkey’s Istanbul 30 stock market index meanwhile has fallen by 35% in US dollar terms since August 29, 2017. Its most vulnerable lender, Halk Bank, lost 63% of its US dollar value in the same period and now trades at 40% of book value.
Turkey’s banks are shut out of world capital markets, and the country is hard put to raise the US$50 billion in new hard currency it needs to finance a current account deficit running at around 6% of GDP. Turkish businesses have about US$300 billion in foreign currency debt, and the cost of servicing it has nearly doubled in local-currency terms due to the lira’s depreciation since 2015. The banks will have trouble rolling over their existing short-term borrowings in hard currency, and trouble collecting loan payments from customers crushed by the collapse of the lira.
Like the dead parrot in the Monty Python sketch, Turkey’s major banks have flipped the mortal coil and joined the choir celestial, but the Turkish central bank is there to maintain the illusion of life. The trouble is that the central bank’s resources are running thin: Foreign exchange reserves as of June 1 stood at just US$82 billion, or four months’ worth of imports, vs. nearly US$120 billion at the end of 2014.
Posted by: 3dc ||
06/21/2018
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#1
Turkey’s banks are shut out of world capital markets
It’s not clear to me why this is so, but they certainly aren’t a risk I’d be comfortable with.
#7
The US ought to be quietly working the bankers to push this collapse farther faster and deeper, to trigger an uprising against Erdogan and the Islamists.
[Atimes] Pakistan's top court orders faster work on graft cases against the former PM’s family and ruling party leaders ahead of polls.
Invisible hands appear to be at work to manipulate the forthcoming election in Pakistan. The judiciary has sped up work on corruption cases pending against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s family and senior leaders of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), ahead of upcoming polls.
The Supreme Court on Sunday directed the country’s accountability court to decide the pending cases by July 10, which is just two weeks prior to the general election scheduled for July 25.
[RT.com] Burger King has removed an ad from social media that promised Russian women a lifetime supply of Whoppers for getting pregnant from World Cup star players, saying that the PR-stunt was “too offensive.”
The fast-food chain’s page on Russia’s most popular social network, VK (VKontakte), announced on Tuesday that Burger King was offering “a reward for the girls, who would get pregnant from the international football starts,” who arrived in the country for the FIFA World Cup.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] There have been no civilian casualties in the battle to liberate Yemen’s Hodeidah Airport, Arab Coalition front man Turki al-Malki said in an interview with Al Arabiya from Brussels, accusing the Houthis of placing tanks inside residential areas.
"We are now destroying Houthi ...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 Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. 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 ... fortifications near the airport," he said, adding that the operation has not resulted in a dire humanitarian crisis in Hodeidah.
"Hodeidah port is operating as normal and the movement of ships is normal," Malki said. "We have humanitarian and development plans for when we liberate the entire city."
Arab Coalition forces launched strikes on Houthi militia targets in the key port city of Hodeidah on Wednesday as Yemeni armed forces de-mined neighborhoods.
An Al Arabiya English correspondent reported the strikes on eastern Hodeidah and said on the ground, armed forces were combing through residential areas in the city.
This came after Yemeni government forces seized Hodeidah airport from Houthi militias, their commander said, in a major step towards retaking the city.
"The airport was completely cleared, Thank God, and is under control," coalition commander Abdul Salaam al-Shehi said in a video posted by the United Arab Emirates' official WAM news agency.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[SputnikNews - RU]Germany is seeking clarity from the US about upgrading the Eurofighter Typhoon to handle nuclear bombs, pitting Berlin’s commitment to multilateral defense in NATO against a desire to rely on European-made jets instead of US-made alternatives.
Posted by: 3dc ||
06/21/2018
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#1
...HahahahahahahahahahahahaNO.
Short version - the Typhoon, while a remarkably capable fighter, didn't have any air-to-ground capability at all when built and has only in the last few years even began to test the kind of strike capability we take for granted. Rewiring the birds to be nuclear capable will cost a fortune, especially when one remembers that there are no tactical nuclear weapons in Germany for them to deliver - we pulled all of ours out almost two decades ago, and I can't see any German government of this generation allowing them to come back even if the Russians are marching down the Unter der Linden. This is no more than a red herring to try and distract those who are rightfully criticizing the German commitment to NATO.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
06/21/2018 7:05
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Eurofighter - designed and built by a European Consortium to demonstrate their independence and skill. Let them do the estimate and work. It's not like the French and Brits aren't nuke capable.
#3
This is from a Russian News outlet, so 'tweaking' the Euros is commonplace, but nonetheless I would agree with Mike (especially his first line).
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
06/21/2018 9:34
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We can do it. We'd be happy to do it. But it's gonna cost ya. Big time.
No, it will never happen for Mike's reasons, but a little friendly negotiation can't hurt, eh? And who knows, maybe our defense contractors can find another teat to hang on to.
US Crude Oil Field Production is at a current level of 10.90M [as of the week ending 8 June 2018]
, up from 10.80M last week and up from 9.318M one year ago. This is a change of 0.93% from last week and 16.98% from one year ago. as a bonus, below is a link to a 2007 article warning about people who are denialists about peak oil:
[EVWorld] Steve Andrews answers charges that 'peak oil' is an oil industry manipulated disinformation campaign to drive up prices.
Posted by: lord garth ||
06/21/2018
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#1
'Peak oil'? The first time the US Govt voiced concern over dependence on ground based hydrocarbon use was 10 yrs before the 1st oilwell was even drilled, or what many people would identify as the mid point of the Mexican War 1847.
Then, in the mid-1880's a stock transaction so enormous that it took years to complete was undertaken by the number 3 guy at Standard Oil. He sold his entire holdings in the company because a noted expert told him that inasmuch as the Earth was finite it stood to reason oil was too and it was only a matter of time for Standard Oil.
Then in 1898 the most renowned geologist (if such a thing is even possible) of his day told a group of prominent industrialists that he could say with absolute confidence there would be and in fact could be NO economically viable petroleum finds West of the Mississippi.
Then in 1900 or 1901 a long and long winded article appeared warning of the extreme dangers of drilling into salt domes. It intoned darkly that the only thing to be gained from such a profoundly dangerous practice was the ruination of your tools and the death and disfigurement of your crew. Not long afterwards Spindletop came in. Land surrounding the well head had sold for $7/ac, lock stock water mineral and surface rights. Aftwr they got the well in hand and were figuring out what to do with the newly formed 50 ac lake, land leased for $10,000/ac for 1 month.
You can go on like that. There is a variety of human that lives from crisis to crisis and in a dark age of lack and misery, mostly self created. I would prefer to get to drilling and leave the socialists to whine and soak their heads.
The United Kingdom matters not simply because Great Britain is an island, or because the Kingdom has the naval power to defend its island, but because the Kingdom has sufficient naval strength to project power well beyond its island. That enables the Brits to pick the time and place of the conflicts they choose to engage in. Even if they choose poorly, they can always pack up, sail away and try again later. Clashes that leave most in ruin at most force an early election in the Kingdom.
There are only two things that could undo this strength. First, the United Kingdom’s flexible strength could be overwhelmed by a more powerful navy. Since the only Atlantic Ocean navy that is more powerful is the American Navy, this is a low risk. Second, the United Kingdom could for whatever reason find its navy degraded to the point that it can no longer project power. And that is precisely the challenge facing the United Kingdom today.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
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The anecdotal Story is that Eisenhower really grew to hate the British officers during WW II . He Considered them self inflated snobs. When he became President and he had the opportunity to stick it too them, he didn't hold back.
#2
...I don't think it was so much that Ike hated his British counterparts (there's lots of evidence, anecdotal and on the record, to the contrary, although he never really did like Montgomery much at all) as much as he understood that behind everything they did was the need to preserve the Empire and all it stood for. He was always willing to work with the UK - but he always took a very close look at their motives.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
06/21/2018 7:24
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#2...He was always willing to work with the UK - but he always took a very close look at their motives.
Yes. Carlo D'Este has written on WW2 military history. Eisenhower "got rolled" early and often by the British staff in the planning -- they showed up with a well-developed British Plan that always seemed, on careful study, to put British Goals first. Their job, certainly, but he learned that Caveat Emptor! was the watch word.
[GUARDIAN.NG] German police said Wednesday they had foiled a biological attack with last week’s arrest of a Tunisian suspected jihadist in possession of the deadly poison ricin and bomb-making material.
"Very concrete preparations had been made for an act with a ... biological bomb, which is a first for Germany," said Holger Muench, head of the BKA Federal Criminal Police Office.
German police commandos on June 12 stormed the Cologne ...the largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia and the fourth populated city in Germany.... apartment of the 29-year-old Tunisian identified only as Sief Allah H. and discovered "toxic substances" that turned out to be ricin.
Produced by processing castor beans, ricin is lethal in minute doses if swallowed, inhaled or injected and 6,000 times more potent than cyanide, with no known antidote.
Muench said, speaking to German public radio, that "we became aware of this person a few months ago, and then evidence emerged pointing to links to the so-called Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're 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 the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... The Tunisian man, who has been charged with possession of weapons of war and planning a serious act of violence against the state, was thought to have followed instructions on making a ricin bomb disseminated online by the IS.
"There are instructions on how to do this, including by Islamist organizations, on the internet, and this person was obviously guided by that," Muench said.
Prosecutors have said he was "strongly suspected of intentionally manufacturing biological weapons" ‐ but they reiterated Wednesday they still lacked concrete indications or details of an attack plan.
Seeds, coffee grinder The head of the BND foreign intelligence service, Hans-Georg Maassen, said that a "very likely" attack had been prevented thanks to "cooperation between security service at the national and international level," news agency DPA reported.
Bild daily has reported Germany received a warning from the CIA based on the suspect’s online purchases.
The domestic intelligence service BfV said it also received a tip-off over a telephone hotline about the Tunisian, who is married to a German woman who recently converted to Islam, DPA reported.
During the police raid, said Muench, "we found a large number of castor seeds from which to make (ricin), as well as the utensils you need to make an bomb".
"Which concrete target he had in mind we don’t know yet ... and the question of possible accomplices also remains open."
Prosecutors say Sief Allah H. started buying the equipment and ingredients to make ricin in mid-May ‐ including online purchases of thousands of "castor seeds and an electric coffee grinder".
Police had found over 3,000 castor seeds and 84 milligrams of ricin, as well as 950 grams of pyrotechnic powder, two bottles of flammable liquid, wires soldered to light bulbs and 240 metal balls.
He had been in contact with radical Islamists and had tried twice last year to travel via The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... to Syria, "presumably to the ’Islamic State'" bases there, they said in a statement.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/21/2018
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[ALMASDARNEWS] Syria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations ...where theory meets practice and practice loses... , Dr. Bashar al-Jaafari, stated on Tuesday that some nations spent billions of dollars to arm the faceless myrmidons inside Syria.
In a statement at the 3rd United Nations Conference to Review Progress Made in the Implementation of the Program of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All its Aspects, Ja’afari said that the illicit trade in small and light weapons represents the deteriorating ethical reality of the relations in the world nowadays.
He added that the world, today, is witnessing the most dangerous phenomenon which is the direct transport of small and light weapons and their ammunition by certain states to the groups which are on the list of the Security Council as terrorist groups.
Ja’afari stressed that this dangerous phenomenon is not only related to the illicit trading in the small and light weapons, but also, in the direct transport of the certain states’ stocks.
He pointed out that some Arab states, such as Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... and Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... , are still spending billions of dollars to buy weapons and transport them to the terrorist groups and there are some regional states, such as The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... , which are supplying faceless myrmidons with all types of care, training, protection and weapons.
Ja’afari added that there are some Western states, such as the US, La Belle France and Britannia, which have spent billions of dollars to provide all types of weapons and to train and finance gunnies who exist on the Syrian lands including the gunnies of Jabhat al-Nusra ...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli al-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ... and ISIS (ISIS).
Posted by: Fred ||
06/21/2018
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[PREMIUMTIMESNG] A federal politician, Ali Ndume (APC, Borno) has identified two black spots from which he says Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... snuffies operate in Borno State.
He said the snuffies are operating from two bases: the Damboa/Gwoza/ Chibok axis and the Lake Chad axis.
He also urged security agencies to intensify efforts on the two locations.
He said this while reacting to the recent killings over the weekend in the outskirts of Damboa town in Damboa Local Government Area of Borno State.
At least 31 persons were killed and about 48 others injured after suspected Boko Haram jacket wallahs on Saturday attacked Abachari village in Damboa local government area, residents and witnesses have said.
The suicide bombers, said to be six by the army, reportedly targeted people returning home after a Sallah fair in Damboa.
In a statement from Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... , Mr Ndume said if the military strikes at the bases, the snuffies would be tamed and possibly rendered harmless.
"We are appealing to the military to intensify operation on the darkest spots in Borno state where the snuffies are said to be carrying out their operations from.
"These two spots are reported to be Damboa/ Gwoza axis and the Lake Chad axis. It is suspected and reported that Abubakar Shekau ... the lunatic leader of Boko Haram who has been reported dead at least eleven times, pledged his body and soul to ISIS, told his fighters to hang it up once or twice, and been fired by the Caliph and refused to step down ... , a factional leader of the sect is operating from the Chibok axis while the Mamman Nur’s group operates from the Lake Chad axis," he said.
He said that if the military "visit the bases of the snuffies with superior firepower, the snuffies would be defeated."
"They should clear the two bases for us to have peace. These are the two reported and known bases of the snuffies in Borno State," he said.
He sympathised with the families of those who were killed in the attack, adding that he has sent a delegation to visit the injured at the hospital and donated an undisclosed amount of money to the victims.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/21/2018
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[ATimes] Pakistan is far behind schedule in its international debt obligations owing to a balance of payment crisis.
The Pakistani rupee fell from 115.63 at the start of last week to its lowest value ever of 121.39 against the US dollar by day-end on Thursday, ahead of the Eid holidays.
This is the third fall of the Pakistani currency in the past six months. In December last year, the rupee fell below the 110 mark for the first time in history, with the then finance minister Ishaq Dar engulfed in corruption cases.
Officials close to Dar told Asia times that the former Pakistan prime minister was behind maintaining the rupee’s artificial value around the 100 mark. “He always said 100 is a psychological number, and we should make sure that the rupee doesn’t fall too far below that,” a former aide of Dar told Asia Times. This ensured that the rupee fluctuated around the 100 mark for the most part of Dar’s five-year tenure as finance minister.
The rupee then crossed the 115 mark in March this year after the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) cut support, bringing the currency closer to its actual value. It was hoped that the move would help increase exports and address Pakistan’s $10 billion current account deficit.
However, with no significant impact on exports over the past three months, the SBP was pushed to address the relentless pressure on the country’s foreign currency reserves. “The market-based adjustment is reflective of the country’s external balance of payments position which is under pressure due to a large trade deficit,” a statement issued by the central bank read.
Former caretaker finance minister Salman Shah believes there might be more devaluation of the rupee, but says that most of it has taken place.
“The central bank is no longer supporting the rupee and its value reflects the demand and supply situation. So the devaluation will stop once the rupee reaches its true value. And I think most of the pressure has now been released,” he told Asia times.
Shah also believes that the Eid holiday period can actually provide some respite to the local currency. “There is usually an uptick of remittances around Eid. So we’ll have to wait and see,” he said. However, the wider consensus among analysts is that the rupee will drop further.
Most of these predictions cite the hefty imports bill that Pakistan has to pay. Senior financial journalist and analyst at FX Empire Shahab Jafry agrees that the rupee will continue to slump. “Traders had seen it coming, because the central bank is no longer supporting the rupee when there is excess demand for the dollar,” he told Asia Times. “Instead of increasing imports, it inflated the debt payments. The only options for the government is a massive loan or massive investment.”
When asked, government officials confirmed that the imports from China, as part of the economic corridor with Pakistan, form a bulk of the imports bill. Salman Shah suggested that the government needs to better schedule its bills. “Scheduling import bills in the longer-term can help avoid a further slide. The government needs to improve its debt management and extend its maturity structure. And it’s time to make sure that the projects being invested in start giving returns.”
While another bailout appears to be the only way out for the economy, the current caretaker government has ruled out talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout program. Finance ministry insiders also reveal that Pakistan is “far behind schedule” in its international debt obligations owing to the balance of payment crisis.
Being a former caretaker finance minister himself, Shah conceded that it was difficult for the government to take any long-term measures. “It’s difficult for the caretaker set-up to do much. But yes, they are taking away the artificial support. Maybe they can look for short-term bolstering of reserves by seeking financing from China and improve the CPEC terms and conditions,” he says.
Shahab Jafry says a short-term solution could actually end up helping Pakistan in the long-run. “Whoever gives out the loan will demand austerity, [ask for] more interest rates and will demand that the rupee be moved towards its actual value,” he believes.
Posted by: 3dc ||
06/21/2018
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[HotAir] As we’ve recently discussed, President Trump signed a series of executive orders which seek to ease the process for firing delinquent government workers and institute reforms in how government worker unions operate inside of federal offices. The National Treasury Employees Union has already gone to court to try to stop these reforms and HUD ran into problems when it tried to evict the union from its offices.
Yes, it's been a rocky start on the reform trail. But now the Democrats in the Senate are getting in on the act, demanding that the reforms be canceled. 45 of them signed on to a letter demanding that the President rescind the orders and put an end to the madness of removing workers who spend their time watching porn on their government computers while being paid on the taxpayer dime.
A group of 45 Democratic senators on Tuesday demanded President Trump rescind his controversial recent executive orders that seek to make it easier to fire federal workers and severely curb the influence of federal employee unions.
In a letter to Trump, the senators, led by Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., blasted the orders, arguing they "undermine the foundations of our civil service system."
"The recent executive orders undermine the decades-old rights of federal employees to fair representation in the workplace," they wrote. "These orders significantly reduce the extent to which federal agencies will negotiate collective bargaining agreements with their workforce. Instead, federal agencies or outside panels will impose workplace policies without good faith negotiation.
I understand that the Democrats have had trouble settling on a cohesive campaign messaging strategy for the midterms, but is this really the hill they want to die on? Let's stop and consider precisely what it is that Van Hollen and his colleagues are calling for. Under current rules, even the most egregious violations by federal workers can almost never result in an immediate dismissal. Management is forced to issue letters suggesting how the worker might improve their performance and establish a "review period." And the employee always has the right to appeal through a process which the department's management has zero control over. Even in the generally rare cases where someone does get fired, they can frequently have it overturned and be returned to their old positions. And if they are put on leave while the process plays out they almost always receive their full pay and benefits, sometimes for years.
Do you really want to go out before the nation's voters, most of whom have to work in the real world for companies that fire you on the same day that you massively screw up, and demand those "rights" for these people? Particularly when the voters you are addressing are the ones paying those salaries, that doesn't sound like the best strategy ever.
And what of the unions? Those are not government organizations. They are private labor groups who represent the workers and collectively bargain for their incredibly generous compensation and retirement packages. (Retirement plans which almost none of those private sector voters get any more.) They're being allowed to use government office space and resources which are paid for by the taxpayers. And some of those union officials hold what are technically considered "government jobs" with taxpayer-funded salaries while they spend all of their hours on "official time" doing union business. Do you think the public is going to be on your side or the side of the guy who signed the order trying to rein them in?
On second thought, just go ahead and go with that, Democrats. I'm sure it will work out marvelously for you. They can't have this end. It will cut off supporters and graft payments
[Al Jazeera] Forces loyal to Syria's government committed what amounted to crimes against humanity, including deliberately starving civilians, during the siege of Eastern Ghouta, UN Sherlocks said on Wednesday.
The five-year siege, on the outskirts of the capital, ended in April when Damascus regained control of the rebel enclave.
"Following the end of the longest running siege in modern history, the UN Commission of Inquiry [on Syria] has condemned this method of warfare in Syria as barbaric," the UN Sherlocks said in a statement.
The commission, tasked by the UN Human Rights Council in March to urgently investigate recent events in Eastern Ghouta, released a 23-page report filled with horrific details of civilian suffering.
"It is completely abhorrent that besieged civilians were indiscriminately attacked, and systematically denied food and medicine," commission head Paulo Pinheiro said.
As pro-government forces dramatically escalated their campaign to recapture Eastern Ghouta between February and April this year, they used tactics that were "largely unlawful in nature," the report said.
The tactics "aimed at punishing the inhabitants of Eastern Ghouta and forcing the population, collectively, to surrender or starve," it added.
The report described thousands of desperate people holed up for months in squalid basements with dwindling food rations and few, if any, sanitation facilities as bombs and missiles rained down.
According to the report "certain acts perpetrated by pro-government forces, including the deliberate starvation of the civilian population as a method of warfare, amount to the crime against humanity of inhumane acts causing serious mental and physical suffering."
'War crimes'
The Sherlocks slammed the widespread use of sieges throughout Syria's seven-year conflict, which has killed more than 350,000 people.
"Hundreds of thousands of Syrian women, men and children countrywide have suffered for too long the perverse and long-lasting effects of this medieval form of warfare," the report said.
The UN's Syria commission, set up in 2011 shortly after the civil war began, has repeatedly accused the warring parties of crimes.
In its latest report, the commission also faulted armed opposition groups like Jaish al-Islam ...Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) was established by Zahran Alloush, the son of Saudi-based religious scholar Abdullah Mohammed Alloush, after Syrian authorities released him from prison in mid-2011 where he had been serving time for his Salafist activism. The group claimed responsibility for carrying out the July 2012 Damascus bombing that killed Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani. It was a driving force behind actions in the Damascus region. It cooperated and conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. In Sptember 2013 Saudi Arabia engineered Liwa al-Islam's merger with fifty other more or less Salafist groups as a counterweight to al-Nusra, which the Learned Elders of Islam considered was growing too powereful... , Ahrar al-Sham ...a Syria jihadi group made up of Islamists and salafists, not that there's that much difference, formed into a brigade. They make up the main element of the Islamic Front but they don't profess adoration of al-Qaeda and they've been fighting (mainly for survival) against the Islamic State. Their leadership was wiped out at a single blow by a suicide kaboom at a crowded basement meeting in September, 2014... and Hay'et Tahrir al-Sham for committing "war crimes" by launching "indiscriminate attacks" on Damascus, and killing and maiming hundreds of civilians.
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The United States on Wednesday strongly condemned recent attacks on Libyan oil ports by militia loyal to Ibrahim Jathran and called for “all armed actors” to withdraw immediately from oil installations, the US State Department said.
“The United States believes these vital Libyan resources must remain under the exclusive control of the National Oil Corporation and the sole oversight of the Government of National Accord,” the statement said.
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[True West] February 10, 1918. In the bitter cold, a four-man posse riding in from Klondyke, Arizona, surrounds a lone cabin in Kielberg Canyon. The posse‐a county sheriff, two deputies and a U.S. marshal‐has arrest warrants for four men in the cabin: Jeff Power, his sons Tom and John, and hired hand Tom Sisson. The brothers are wanted for draft dodging and Jeff and Sisson are wanted for perjury.
[SN SpaceNews] China has lowered the orbit of its Tiangong-2 space lab, likely in preparation for deorbiting the orbital facility and thus averting a similar scenario to the uncontrolled re-entry of Tiangong-1 earlier this year.
Tiangong-2 was launched in September 2016 to test advanced life support and refueling and resupply capabilities via the crewed Shenzhou-11 and uncrewed Tianzhou-1 cargo missions, in preparation for constructing a large, modular space station in low Earth orbit.
Orbital information published by the U.S. Strategic Command’s Joint Force Space Component Command, through the Joint Space Operations Center, indicates that Tiangong-2 has moved from an altitude of around 380 by 386 kilometers down to 292 by 297 kilometers.
No announcement regarding the status of the Tiangong-2 space lab has been made. The China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSE), which manages China’s human spaceflight and space station related missions, did not respond to a SpaceNews request for comment.
Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told SpaceNews that, “it seems likely that the lowering of Tiangong-2’s orbit is the first step in safely disposing of it.”
McDowell says the orbit of Tiangong-2 was most likely lowered through two burns early June 13.
Tiangong-2 is a more advanced version of the Tiangong-1 space lab launched in 2011. Both were designed as stepping stones for developing and verifying technologies for larger 20-metric-ton modules for the planned Chinese Space Station, a long-term ambition laid out in 1992.
Phil Clark, a long-time observer of China’s space activities and author of numerous articles for the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, has been tracking Tiangong-2’s orbit since launch. He noted a recent relative absence of burns to raise its orbit, which has been followed by last week’s activity.
“In part China doesn’t want a repeat of Tiangong-1 going rogue,” Clark told SpaceNews.
Tiangong-1 suffered an anomaly in early 2016, apparently ending contact with the ground. Atmospheric drag saw the spacecraft’s orbit gradually decay, with a high-profile uncontrolled re-entry eventually occurring April 2. Most of the space lab burned up, with remaining debris landing in the Pacific Ocean.
Clark adds that the missions have already demonstrated that Tiangong modules and Tianzhou cargo can operate in orbit for requisite periods of time.
There is currently no indication of what the next move will be or when it could come.
From Tiangong to space station
The 8.6-metric-ton Tiangong-2 spacecraft is 10.4 meters long with a maximum width of 3.35 meters. In late 2016 Tiangong-2 docked with Shenzhou-11 and hosted two astronauts for 30 days in what was China’s longest human spaceflight mission so far.
It was visited by the Tianzhou-1 cargo spacecraft in 2017 to test and verify refuelling capabilities in microgravity — a capability crucial to China’s plans to maintain a future space station in low Earth orbit.
It also carried a range of science payloads. POLAR, a gamma-ray burst detector developed by an international collaboration including Swiss, Chinese and Polish institutes, stopped functioning fully April 1, 2017 due to power failure. According to principal investigator Nicolas Produit, the astroparticle experiment collected excellent data during six months of operations, with science results to be published shortly.
China is aiming to launch the first module of the space station proper, named Tianhe, around 2020. This mission first requires the nominal return-to-flight of the heavy lift Long March 5 launch vehicle late this year after a failure last July, followed by a successful debut of the Long March 5B, a variant used for low Earth orbit launches, in mid-2019.
The 60-100-metric-ton Chinese Space Station is expected to be completed with the addition of two experiment modules around 2022 and will be capable of hosting three astronauts for long durations and up to six during crew turnover. It will be joined by a co-orbiting Hubble-class space telescope that can dock for propellant supply, maintenance and repairs.
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] The Afghan Intelligence, National Directorate of Security ...the Afghan national intel agency... (NDS), operatives have busted an urban network of the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're 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 the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... of Iraq and Syria Khurasan (ISIS-K) in Jalabad city, the quiet provincial capital of Nangarhar The unfortunate Afghan province located adjacent to Mohmand, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. The capital is Jalalabad. The province was the fief of Younus Khalis after the Soviets departed and one of his sons is the current provincial Taliban commander. Nangarhar is Haqqani country.. province.
Provincial governor’s front man Ataullah Khogyani told news hounds that five ISIS-K holy warriors were also tossed in the clink Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please! during the operation.
He said the terror group was using the network to carry out assassinations of the government staff besides planting explosives, smuggling arms, and conducting other terrorist related activities.
Khogyani further added that the NDS Special Forces also confiscated 21 various types of weapons during separate operations conducted in Surkh Rod district.
He also added that the ISIS hideouts which were used to coordinate attacks in Jalalabad city and Rodat district during the Eid days have also been destroyed during the Arclight airstrikes.
The provincial government media office in a statement confirmed that the detained individuals have confessed to their crimes.
The detained individuals have told the security forces that they were trained by the foreigners including Pak holy warriors before they were deployed to Jalalabad city for the attacks.
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[Khaama (Afghanistan)] The Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... group leadership has branded the selfie pictures taken by the group’s fighters during Eid and Ceasefire period in the government-controlled areas a ’honest mistake’.
Taliban front man Zabiullah Mujahid issued a statement after reports emerged that the movement of the Taliban fighters in government-controlled areas, including Kabul, and the selfie pictures with the Afghan forces, have sparked anger among the leadership of the group.
He claims that the leadership of Taliban does not consider the movements of the group’s fighters as an ’intentional mistake’ after they were seen travelling in the areas controlled by the government and for taking pictures with the security forces of the government.
This comes as reports emerged earlier suggesting that selfie pictures taken by the Talibs during the ceasefire period have apparently sparked anger among the Taliban group leadership.
A senior Taliban Überstürmbannführer informed regarding the growing anger among the Taliban leadership over the selfie pictures the group’s fighters have taken with the security forces, government officials, and ordinary civilians.
"Last night, an emergency meeting was called and all the commanders were informed and directed to take strict disciplinary action against all those Taliban members who visited citizens and took pictures with the Afghan authorities," a senior unnamed Taliban official told Rooters.
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[RADIOSHABELLE] A witness says at least people were maimed in Mogadishu after an bomb fitted into to their luxury car went kaboom! on the main Makka al-Mukarama road on Wednesday.
The IED-attached vehicle went off near Haji Pasto junction along the busy road of Maka al-Mukarama, which links the Airport to the Presidential Palace in Mogadishu.
The blast destroyed the private car, leaving the occupants maimed who are yet to be identified. Police cordoned off the scene and began an investigation into the incident.
No group has so far claimed the responsibility for the blast which would be the first since the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
The kaboom comes on the heel of the reopening of the city’s roads following a presidential order after the visit by the Æthiopian PM Abiy Ahmed last Saturday.
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[PREMIUMTIMESNG] Hours after suspected cultists went on rampage injuring people and damaging cars, the police say they have tossed in the calaboose Drop the rosco, Muggsy, or you're one with the ages! some of them.
The police in Plateau said they arrested 33 suspected cultists along Bauchi road in Jos, Jos North Local Government Area.
The police also said dangerous weapons were recovered from the suspects, known as "Sarasuka."
The police spokesperson, Terna Tyopev, in a telephone interview with PREMIUM TIMES, said the arrests were made Tuesday morning, following violent clash between rival cult groups.
"This morning (Tuesday) we arrested 33 suspected Sarasuka members. We also recovered120 packets of tramadol drugs with 23 knives from the suspects."
Mr. Tyopev added that "a number of cars were smashed by the rampaging cultists, but at the moment I can not ascertain the exact number of cars affected. Though we have brought the situation under control."
Cult festivities created tension within Jos metropolis, as residents and travellers to Bauchi and Gombe states avoided Bauchi road route out of fear.
PREMIUM TIMES learnt that the festivities began around Congo junction, Nasarawa Gwom area on Monday evening, leaving four persons injured and seven vehicles vandalised.
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[ALMASDARNEWS] A group of assailants who had assassinated several Kurdish commanders in the Syrian city of Raqqa has been captured.
Militants from the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces raided a hideout for Harakat al-Qiyam krazed killer group, killing one of them and capturing 2 others.
Investigations with the tossed in the calaboose Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please! led to arresting 10 other members from the sleeper cell.
Formed in August 2017, Harakat al-Qiyam is an krazed killer group active in northern Syria in order to fight the US-backed Kurdish militia.
The group has ever since carried out several liquidations targeting top commanders and officials.
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[PREMIUMTIMESNG] A Nollywood producer and actor, Bambino Anachina, has passed on.
Nollywood filmmaker, Fidelis Duker, confirmed the news on his Facebook page on Sunday.
Mr. Duker paid glowing tributes to his late colleague in a lengthy post on Facebook.
“He was among the few people I spent time with on Thursday, 14th at the Zafaa Global Awards media unveiling before my car was burgled and my laptop amongst other valuable carted away. He was just so engaging and entertaining that afternoon,” he wrote.
“I was with my wife and when I told her Chukwudi Bambino Anachina died today. She screamed, no.
“He wasn’t looking sick. Bambino was a very committed and devoted actor, production manager and highly enterprising creative entrepreneur. Humble, respectful and hardworking.
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[AspiStrategist] Late last week a US drone killed Maulana Fazlullah, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban—known as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)—in Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province. This is a serious body blow to the TTP, which had already been significantly weakened by several counter-insurgency and counterterrorism operations in recent years.
Fazlullah, who was 44 years old, was a particularly nasty individual. He took over as the TPP’s leader after another US drone strike killed his predecessor, Hakimullah Mehsud, in November 2013. Fazlullah sought the imposition of Sharia law throughout Pakistan. He led the insurgency in the Swat valley in 2007–2009 during which music and barber shops were banned and girls were discouraged from going to school. It took some 35,000 troops to dislodge him and his fighters from that area.
But Fazlullah will be especially remembered for two notoriously vicious terrorist acts. First he ordered the assassination in 2012 of 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai because of her advocacy of education for girls. She was badly injured in the terrorist attack but recovered, and was eventually awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.
Continued on Page 49
Kirkuk (Iraqinews.com) ‐ Iraqi police forces found on Wednesday two tunnels for Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're 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 the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... and detonated 13 explosive charges during security campaigns in Hawija district in oil-rich Kirkuk.
Federal Police Chief Raed Shawkat Gawdat said in a statement that three forces of Evil were also locked away Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'! in two villages in Kirkuk, ... a thick stew of Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, and probably Antarcticans, all of them mutually hostile most of the time... while three others expeditiously departed at a goodly pace before the police catch them.
Police forces also found a roadside kaboom placed near a Kirkuk hospital, Iraqi website Alghad Press quoted Gawdat as saying.
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Baghdad (Iraqinews.com) ‐ Three people were maimed Wednesday in a firefight between Iraqi police and Iraq’s Hezbollah militias in the capital Baghdad, a security source said.
"The festivities erupted after a police patrol stopped a car in the Paleostine Street in Baghdad. Later on, a five-vehicle convoy of Hezbollah arrived at the scene and clashed with the police forces before fleeing the scene," the source told Al Arab Al Yawm newspaper.
"Iraqi security forces sealed off the headquarters of Iraq’s Hezbollah in Baghdad," the source said. "Following negotiations between police and Hezbollah leaders, the latter agreed to hand over the fighters who had fired on the police patrol."
According to the source, three people were maimed in the faceoff, including two coppers and a Hezbollah fighter.
Kata’ib Hezbollah, or Hezbollah Brigades, is an Iraqi Shia paramilitary group supported by Iran. The group, which is a component of the Iran-backed al-Hashd al-Shaabi fighters, played a role in Iraq’s wars against Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're 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 the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... and American Invasion forces.
The group’s structure is not known, but Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, an adviser to Iran’s Quds Force and a former Badr Organization member, is known to be a senior figure in the group.
Frying pans and fires come to mind — but which is which?
Baghdad (Iraqinews.com) ‐ The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said on Wednesday that Iraq is home to nearly 300,000 refugees, mostly from Syria.
"The Kurdistan Region of Iraq houses 97 per cent of the Syrian refugees in Iraq," a statement by Mr. Bruno Geddo, the UNHCR Representative in Iraq, said on the World Refugee Day.
He added that most of these refugees are generously receiving and affording "equal access with locals to employment, education and social services."
"For the 250,000 Syrian refugees sheltering in Iraq, return is not a sustainable option at present," the statement read. "Syrian refugees in Iraq and the communities that host them will continue to need support for some time to come."
Geddo added that as forced displacement worldwide increases year on year, helping refugees rebuild their lives must be a shared responsibility.
"Hand in hand with partners, the Iraqi and Kurdish people, and refugee communities themselves, we at UNHCR work tirelessly to try and find sustainable solutions for refugees in Iraq," he concluded.
Local and international rights agencies have repeatedly highlighted poor living conditions both at refugee camps and at Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're 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 the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... -held areas.
IS holy warriors had regularly executed civilians attempting to flee their havens. Officials have also occasionally pointed out that refugees were reluctant to return home due to the severe damage to infrastructure.
Now that the war is over and only the mopping up remains...
Baghdad (Iraqinews.com) ‐ A local tribe in Iraq has urged Iraqi authorities to form a special brigade from its members to take Dire Revenge on Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're 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 the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... murderous Moslems, who killed six of its rustics after kidnapping them in the Jazirah plain on Monday.
In a message to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Wednesday, the Shammar tribe, one of Iraq’s largest Arab tribes with more than 1.5 million members, held Iraqi security forces "accountable for the protection of Iraqi civilians against Islamic State threats".
It called on Abadi to open the door for a new batch of the tribe’s volunteers to join the Iraqi army to stand up to recurrent attacks of Islamic State in the Jazirah plain, where a host of Arab tribes are residing.
The tribe further reiterated its unshakable stance to "stand in the face of injustice and defend the oppressed people, at any cost."
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#1
Every since the Pharoahs the tribals on the borders have wanted money to 'protect' things. Or its a payoff to the tribal chiefs...
[AlAhram] Incursions by Islamist holy warriors into western Niger from neighbouring Mali have caused more than 16,000 people to flee their homes since the start of the year, the UN said Wednesday.
"Growing insecurity since January has caused the number of displaced people to leap," the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.
"More than 16,000 people are internally displaced in the regions of Tillaberi and Tahoua," it said, referring to two regions near the border with Mali.
It blamed "repeated attacks by armed non-state groups" and an "intensification of inter-community conflicts" on the Niger-Mali border.
In May alone, 2,867 people were added to the list of known displaced, compared to 540 in January.
Niger is one of a number of poor, fragile countries in the Sahel that have been hit by a jihadist revolt.
The country is part of the so-called G5 Sahel group, which aims at creating a 5,000-member joint force to tackle the Death Eaters and criminal gangs which roam the remote region.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... ’s embassy in Leb released a statement warning that a person on social media posing as a royal calling himself as Talal bin Sultan is an imposter.
The imposter has been seen on social media platforms posing as a Saudi diplomat meeting with figures and attending events.
"The embassy would like to alert that this person is unknown and is not one of the sons of His Royal Highness Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz ‐ may God’s mercy be on him. The embassy also calls on whomever it may concern not to deal with this person," a statement posted on the embassy’s twitter account read.
"The embassy has also begun to take all legal procedures to prosecute him and reveal his true identity to reveal the purpose of his impersonation and use of a fake name and harming whomever he contacts," the statement added.
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[AlAhram] Seven Islamist murderous Moslems surrendered to Algerian authorities on Wednesday near the North African country's border with Mali, the defence ministry said.
Security forces recovered arms including six Kalashnikov assault rifles, the ministry said in a statement.
Violence has declined in Algeria since the 1990s, when a conflict between the state and Islamist turbans killed an estimated 200,000 people.
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and small bands of fighters allied to Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're 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 the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (IS) murderous Moslems are still active in some remote areas.
[Sputnik International - RU]
The United States’ military’s air assault campaign in Afghanistan is reaching heights not seen since at least 2009 - as far back as available data goes - according to a new report from Air Force Central Command.
The uptick in payloads delivered comes 17 years since the US invaded the country in an effort to oust the Taliban from power. Just last November, America's top general in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, said that the war was in a "stalemate."
As of May 2018, the US has already dropped 2,339 weapons from the Afghan skies since the start of the year. May saw the deployment of some 591 munitions in Operation Freedom Sentinel, more than any month since October 2017.
[IsraelTimes] Israeli security forces arrest a Paleostinian Authority police officer in the Paleostinian neighborhood of A-Ram, north of Jerusalem, police say in a statement.
The officer is locked away Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! after a search of his home uncovered a Carl Gustav submachine gun and ammunition.
This type of homemade or craft-produced rudimentary automatic weapon has been used in the majority of shooting attacks on Israeli civilians and security personnel.
A photo of the thing can be seen at the link, along with two boxes of Luger 9mm bullets.
[All Africa] It is a bright Tuesday morning, with children hawking goods to drivers and passersby on the congested streets of Yaounde. The number of these sidewalk sellers is increasing with the ongoing conflict in Cameroon ...a long, narrow country that fills the space between Nigeria and Chad on the northeast, CAR to the southeast. Prior to incursions by Boko Haram nothing ever happened there... 's English-speaking northwest and southwest regions, where fighting between armed separatists and government troops has shut down schools and sent thousands of children fleeing to safer ground.
Among the sidewalk peddlers is 16-year-old Delphine Tabe. She says she has been a hawker for more than a year since she fled from her village in Lebialem, an administrative unit in the southwest.
"I am selling boiled groundnuts to have money and help my mother who is in the hospital. She was beaten by Cameroon gendarmes after a military man was killed in our village. My mother almost died. Our school was burned and students were beaten. Since that day in May 2017, we escaped to Yaounde and we do not have money to go to school."
Delphine says her chances of pursuing her dream - becoming a teacher - are gradually slipping away as she has no one to sponsor her education. Instead, she has to look for money to help her sick mother.
In the kitchen at the house where Delphine lives in Yaounde, food is being prepared for 32 people. Emmanuel Nembo, a 52-year old government worker originally from Lebialem, says that a year ago, he had only five mouths to feed.
The number went kaboom! as people from the southwest fled their villages and pleaded for him to feed and shelter them.
Emmanuel says he is praying for the crisis to stop because many have been coming and he can no longer offer help.
"We are stretching an olive hand of peace. Those in the bush should give a chance. Come back home, to their homes so that they could meet their mothers, brothers and sisters," he says.
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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.
It’s a shift that’s been playing out for years in corporate workplaces, where white-collar employers have been battling one another for top talent out of the region’s 
[Daily Caller] Former President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity czar confirmed Wednesday that former national security adviser Susan Rice told him to "stand down" in response to Russian cyber attacks during the 2016 presidential campaign.
[The Spokesman Review] Rachel Dolezal made her first public appearance in court Wednesday morning on accusations of stealing from the Washington welfare system.
[JP] The new US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, requested the German government to block Iran’s Mahan Air from flying within German airspace and deny it landing rights in the country because of the airline’s material support for terrorism.
[American Thinker] For years ‐ decades, actually ‐ the Democrats have been facilitating the invasion of our country by millions of people who are from, as President Trump once reportedly described them, "s-hole countries." The constantly cited figure of "11 million illegal immigrants [sic]" is a joke. It has remained constant for more than a decade, while new waves of illegal immigrants arrive annually. There are more likely tens of millions of illegal aliens here. 
[BBC] In his well-cut suit, with outstretched hand and beaming smile, Sibusiso Moyo is the very picture of a modern politician.
[Wash Times] Senators voted Wednesday to block President Trump’s $15.4 billion spending cuts package, with lawmakers saying it trimmed the budget too much.
[PJ] One of the Democratic Socialists who hounded Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen out of a D.C. Mexican restaurant Tuesday night is a current employee of the Department of Justice, it has been confirmed.
[National Review] According to a new textbook written by a professor at the University of Exeter, learning mathematics can cause "collateral damage" to society because it "provides a training in ethics-free thought."
[Townhall] First Lady Melania Trump’s office confirmed to The Daily Caller Wednesday that they have notified the Secret Service about actor Peter Fonda’s suggestion, in a series of since-deleted vulgar tweets, that Barron Trump should be kidnapped.
..."doing violence against those that don't agree with".... not just limited to Hollywood twits. 
... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
...either the largest species of Pacific salmon or the current Sheikh of the Burnin' Sands, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and Lord of Most of the Arabians....
[Bangkok Post] A leading member of an militant group operating in Narathiwat province was killed in a gun battle with soldiers at a house he was using as a hideout in Kapho district of Pattani early on Wednesday morning. 
[IsraelTimes] Local government calls for residents to keep bomb shelters ready in case of renewed rocket, mortar fire, after terror groups in Strip launch 45 projectiles
In response to the Israeli air raid, Hamas and the Iran-backed Paleostinian 
[RT.com] Burger King has removed an ad from social media that promised Russian women a lifetime supply of Whoppers for getting pregnant from World Cup star players, saying that the PR-stunt was “too offensive.”
US Crude Oil Field Production is at a current level of 10.90M 
...the largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia and the fourth populated city in Germany....
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
... the lunatic leader of Boko Haram who has been reported dead at least eleven times, pledged his body and soul to ISIS, told his fighters to hang it up once or twice, and been fired by the Caliph and refused to step down ...
[HotAir] As we’ve recently discussed, President Trump signed a series of executive orders which seek to ease the process for firing delinquent government workers and institute reforms in how government worker unions operate inside of federal offices. The National Treasury Employees Union has already gone to court to try to stop these reforms and HUD ran into problems when it tried to evict the union from its offices.
[Al Jazeera] Forces loyal to Syria's government committed what amounted to crimes against humanity, including deliberately starving civilians, during the siege of Eastern Ghouta, UN 
...Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) was established by Zahran Alloush, the son of Saudi-based religious scholar Abdullah Mohammed Alloush, after Syrian authorities released him from prison in mid-2011 where he had been serving time for his Salafist activism. The group claimed responsibility for carrying out the July 2012 Damascus bombing that killed Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani. It was a driving force behind actions in the Damascus region. It cooperated and conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. In Sptember 2013 Saudi Arabia engineered Liwa al-Islam's merger with fifty other more or less Salafist groups as a counterweight to al-Nusra, which the Learned Elders of Islam considered was growing too powereful...
[PREMIUMTIMESNG] A Nollywood producer and actor, Bambino Anachina, has passed on.
Baghdad (Iraqinews.com) ‐ Three people were 
