[DAWN] The Muttahida Qaumi Movement ...English: United National Movement, generally known as MQM, is the 3rd largest political party and the largest secular political party in Pakistain with particular strength in Sindh. From 1992 to 1999, the MQM was the target of the Pak Army's Operation Cleanup leaving thousands of urdu speaking civilians dead... (MQM) chief Altaf Hussain on Sunday evening supported the Zarb-e-Azb operation and said that he "salutes" the endeavors of the Pakistain army, DawnNews reported.
The MQM chief was addressing a rally held by his party to show solidarity with the army.
Speaking to participants, including political workers and citizens, via video-link from London, the MQM chief said that the entire nation is behind the army in the Zarb-e-Azb operation in North Wazoo which is weeding out terrorists.
"The faceless myrmidons want to enforce their version of the sharia using Klashnikov and swords. To destroy a country, seeds of hatred are sown," he said.
During the speech, Altaf said that the people of Pakistain must show unity during the ongoing operation. He further lauded the sacrifices of soldiers who laid down their lives for the nation.
The MQM chief said that his party wants to establish a society where everyone has equal rights and religious freedom regardless of the faith they followed.
He further stressed that MQM wants a 'real democratic' setup in the country.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2014
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#1
While it's doubtful Obama would ever listen to the public, there is the possibility that senior members of his party can persuade him to change his tactics.
Not a chance. Alien abduction stories have more legitimacy.
But the first citizen, nah he will pay no price. We will. Favorable history books are already flooding the market, there is no real footage available with him at anything very icky. Maybe even take a shot at the UN presidency.
#6
We the People are the ones paying the price for being collectively stupid enough to vote this man of marxist past into office, along with his dem budddies and their tacit accomplices the repubs.
O is a symptom of a greater malaise of this country.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/06/2014 22:49
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Ouch. The writer's experience with regard to email policy while working at the EPA during George W. Bush's term in office.
Maybe my experience is why the latest polls are finding about 75 percent of the American people believe Congress should keep investigating what happened to Lerner's emails.
[AnNahar] Security forces are carrying out raids away from media spotlight in several areas across the country in search for suspects, al-Joumhouria newspaper reported on Saturday.
The newspaper reported that raids are ongoing in an attempt to fortify "preventive" security in Leb and avert any possible threats.
The army has been actively raiding several Lebanese regions in search of runaways involved in the planning and execution of terrorist operations around the country.
Security reports obtained by the Lebanese state showed that terrorist operations will increase in the upcoming period despite the exerted efforts to uproot dormant terrorist cells.
Al-Joumhouria said that security reports obtained by the Lebanese state showed that terrorist operations will increase in the upcoming period despite the exerted efforts to uproot dormant terrorist cells.
The army had raided the Afif al-Tibi street in the Beirut neighborhood of Tariq al-Jedideh two days ago in search of terrorist runaways.
Strict security measures have been enforced recently after obtaining information on a plot to target hospitals and high-ranking security officials.
Leb was once again hit by a series of deadly blasts recently, the latest of which was on June 25 when a Saudi jacket wallahwent kaboom! at the Duroy Hotel when he detonated his explosives during a security raid. His accomplice, also a Saudi citizen, survived the blast and is being questioned.
Troops had also raided the Napoleon Hotel in Beirut's Hamra street after obtaining information on the presence of the members of a cell planning terrorist attacks around Leb. Over one hundred people were detained and questioned, but only a French national was kept in jug.
[AnNahar] Mohammedans in Myanmar's second-largest city accused police on Saturday of standing by as a Buddhist mob went on a rampage, torching a school and other buildings.
Angry mourners, some carrying crude weapons, rioted in Mandalay after the funeral of a 36-year-old Buddhist victim of the country's latest eruption of religious unrest, witnesses said.
A school and dormitory in the Mohammedan area of a cemetery on the outskirts of the city were seen charred and damaged on Saturday.
"More than 70 police were here but did nothing," said Win Naing, a Mohammedan donor to the school, who watched the attack from his hiding place in the home of a Buddhist friend.
He said some of the rioters were armed with sticks, metal pipes and even saws.
No children were believed to be in the school at the time and nobody was thought to have been injured in the attack.
Several days of violence, sparked by an accusation of rape, have also left a Mohammedan dead and 14 other people injured.
"Police could have stopped the mob but they did not," said Zaw Zaw Latt, a Mohammedan member of an interfaith group in the city.
There was no immediate comment from police.
At least 250 people have been killed across Myanmar since 2012 in Buddhist-Mohammedanfestivities that have cast a shadow over the country's political reforms.
Police have been accused of inaction in the past and the government has deployed soldiers in some cases to restore order.
A nighttime curfew has been imposed in Mandalay and nine people have been nabbed Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try! in connection with the recent violence.
Police said they were boosting security measures as a precaution in other cities, including the main city Yangon which has a diverse population of religious and ethnic minorities.
Social media users were unable to access Facebook for the second straight evening Friday, amid speculation that Myanmar had blocked the site to curb the spread of inflammatory comment online. The website was working normally on Saturday.
Radical monks have been accused of whipping up religious tensions, with fiery ...a single two-syllable word carrying connotations of both incoherence and viciousness. A fiery delivery implies an audience of rubes and yokels, preferably forming up into a mob... warnings that the country's main religion is under threat from Islam.
A friend of the slain Buddhist man told Agence La Belle France Presse that a Mohammedan gang had used a "sword" in the attack.
The dead Mohammedan man, a popular local bicycle shop owner, was later killed while on his way to attend early morning prayers.
#1
Just like we knew, they were waiting for the spotlight to dim and then they will move in. May be in a week, may be in a year. But they will take revenge.
#2
"Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie said Bundy crossed the line when he allowed states' rights supporters, including self-proclaimed militia members, onto his property to aim guns at police."
I'm not an attorney. Can someone out there tell us if some Federal law was broken here? - UP
#3
The article is a sop to the Kossaks who have been screaming for arrests since April. The article is a report of an interview with Clark County sheriff Doug Gillespie, who said a number of things, and the AP reporter got comments from the BLM.
#2
There is a difference between those that want to come here to become Americans and to make a better life and those that just want to suck off the tit of the well to do without assimilating.
The US is made up of the former, not the latter.
But you wouldn't know anything about that, would you Obama. Overprivlaged prick who never worked a hard day in his spoiled life.
#3
Yet another crisis of his making. No good can come from permitting these children to simply disappear into our country. Any successful immigration effort [new or old] must have as it's foundation, a secure border. Champ is doing precisely the opposite. In spite of his rhetoric, his goal is the destruction of America.
#4
And the natives usually objected---frequently violently. Being less organized than the invaders, they lost---and nowadays are marginalized and reduced to semi-extinction.
#5
Its was also a nation of slavery. We reached a social and economic point of development that made it intolerable and resolved by much blood. Shall, we go back to legalized slavery simply because it once was?
The need of immigration was the development of vast open lands with vast resources and small population. Now we have the bureaucracy harping everyday how we are a burden on the environment and a chatter class of self important nabobs that tell the rest of us will have to do with less.
We have millions of native born who have only basic skills languishing in unemployment. You do not add more to that number while burdening the rest with your redistributionist poison. You are not practicing charity, you are practicing theft.
#6
Slavery is never a good thing. No man should enslave another. If the Constitution were adhered to in a strict sense, such things as slavery never would have been a problem. The modern day version of slavery is that imposed upon its citizens by the Federal government. This form of slavery has been imposed via increased taxes or dictates by a burgeoning bureaucracy that "interprets laws" to their liking, for example, EPA, IRS, the newly minted ACA, BLM, ICE, ATF, and the rest of the alphabet soup of agencies. This growing bureaucracy has resulted in a growing corruption and a weaponization of the Federal government against its people. That has not worked out well for the country.
#8
2K what are your thoughts on what seems to be an old reoccurring problem in this country. Those with a better knowledge of American history could address an interesting bit of history I was really not aware of. We had radicals and conservatives from the very beginning. The radicals doing very much the same things as now. In Philadelphia they wanted to redistribute wealth. The conservatives won the day but it is amazing to see the similarities. The conservative Democrat and now conservative Republican are losing their parties hence the rise of Tea party people. Radicals have hijacked both parties. The cancer within.
#9
The immigrants of today do not wish to assimilate. They flock to DC to secure power for themselves as they have seen the black Americans do. No longer a melting pot. This is now a house divided.
#10
PC term is "salad bowl" to replace 'melting pot'. The latter worked, the former has not - and will not. Sectarianism = 'salad bowl'.
'Salad Bowl' now preached in all Tucson school, and local Ed. Schools. btw - never went to a School of Education at a Univ. I wanted to learn something. Took certification courses for K-12 years later to teach Sp.Ed.
No disrespect meant to Ed.School Rantburgers - you have obviously shed off the vapidity it implies.
#11
I honestly wonder if another two + years of this POS will swamp the ship of state beyond the capacity of the already foundering economic pumps. We are broke, divided, and being subsumed by the ignorant, the venal and the clueless, legal, illegal, native and invader. Can someone offer a bright answer how to close the border and enforce the laws, prevent the creation of new laws by executive tyranny, and preserve the currency? I despair and think the tipping point has passed. My fellow citizens are increasingly outnumbered, apathetic, ignorant, or cowed, and the actions now to right the ship require hard choices and, sadly, hard, stern measures. Are there enough Americans left to nut up and do what needs doing? I don't know, but if there are, they are not in California.....
#12
The Feds are going to be sending in Federal Police in Riot Gear against those who are demanding immigration laws be enforced.
This will be the red line crossed by Obama of Americans vs Americas first ever tyrant. This will get him put out of office. He has said in his book he will stand with immigrants before he will stand with the citizens of the United States of America.
#13
Yes, #12. We have our own Kimmie. He will surely fall. He is a dangerous man living in his own world of make believe. Government is simply his toy to play with. In my opinion he is mentally unstable.
Clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters spread from Jerusalem to Arab towns in northern Israel on Saturday following the funeral of an Arab teenager who Palestinians say was killed by Israeli extremists in a revenge attack.
You'd think that Arabs, among all peoples of the world, would understand a "revenge attack"...
Riots erupted in east Jerusalem on Friday as thousands of Palestinians massed for the burial of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir. The violence spread to Arab towns in northern Israel early on Saturday, with protesters throwing rocks at passing cars, burning tires and lobbing rocks and firebombs at police, who responded with teargas and stun grenades, Israeli police spokeswoman Luba Samri said.
Near the Arab town of Qalansawe, protesters also pulled over a car driven by an Israeli Jew, pulled him out and set the vehicle on fire, Samri said. The driver was not injured. More than 20 people were arrested before the unrest subsided in the afternoon, she said.
Palestinian protesters in Jerusalem also used an electric saw to damage the light rail that connects the heavily Arab populated eastern sector of the city with the mostly Jewish West, Samri said.
The chaos began after three Israeli teenagers, one of whom was a US citizen, were abducted in the West Bank on June 12, sparking a huge manhunt that ended with the gruesome discovery of their bodies earlier this week. The unrest escalated in east Jerusalem on Wednesday after Abu Khdeir’s burned body was found in a forest.
Palestinians accused Israeli extremists of killing the boy to avenge the deaths of the Israeli teens. Israeli police said an investigation is still underway and they have not yet determined who killed the boy or why. Israeli leaders widely condemned the killing of the Arab youth, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed those responsible would be brought to justice.
In a separate incident, relatives said Abu Khdeir’s 15-year-old cousin Tariq, a US citizen who goes to school in Florida, was beaten by police during clashes on Thursday ahead of the funeral. The US Consulate had no immediate comment on the report. His parents, Suha and Salah, said Tariq was detained but had been treated at an Israeli hospital.
Samri, the Israeli police spokeswoman, said that Tariq Abu Khdeir had resisted arrest and attacked police officers. He was detained with a slingshot used to fire stones at police, along with six other protesters, including some armed with knives, she said, adding that several officers were hurt in that specific protest, one of many that day.
Tariq’s father said he witnessed his son’s arrest and insisted the boy was not involved in the violence.
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Former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi called on incumbent Nuri al-Maliki on Saturday to give up his bid for a third term in power or risk the dismemberment of Iraq.
“I think it is time for Mr Maliki to leave the scene,” Allawi told Reuters in an interview in Istanbul. “If he stays on, I think there will be significant problems in the country and a lot of troubles. I believe that Iraq would go the route of dismemberment, ultimately, if this happens.
“Definitely there will be more violence, the security situation will deteriorate,” added Allawi, a secular Shiite who took 21 seats in April’s national election with his secular bloc. During his political career Allawi has drawn support heavily from disaffected Sunnis, who have felt excluded from power during Maliki's rule.
Allawi said Iraq needed a road map that prioritized reconciliation and the building of institutions, and that this was more important than the issue of who will be the next prime minister.
“It is not a matter of changing faces. It is a matter of agreeing on a road map, to get Iraq from where it is now to a brighter future. I think this road map should incorporate two important areas.
“One is the issue of reconciliation. The second is starting to lay down the ground to build the institutions of the state,” he added.
The leaders of the various political factions needed to create a government of national unity committed to such a road map, he said.
Allawi, who met Turkish officials during his visit, also called for a meeting of Iraq’s neighbors with the aim of preserving its unity and preventing the conflict spreading to other places. He also criticized the government’s response to the insurgency, saying more stress should be put on intelligence work and political engagement with Iraq’s other communities, and that military activity should focused on “surgical attacks” by special forces.
“The element of using army and aircraft to hit at provinces cannot distinguish between civilian groups and military or terrorist groups; this can be very dangerous and backfire on the political situation,” he said.
Allawi said he believed there was “still hope” for Iraq to survive as a unified state.
“It’s not too late,” he said. “I believe we should reverse the situation, otherwise the country will drift into being dismembered, one way or another.”
For years Allawi has been an outspoken critic of Maliki, whom he has accused of acting like Saddam Hussein in trying to silence opposition.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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#1
Since the Krazed Killers started destroying shrines in Mosul, I fear it is already too late - we are probably a few hours away from a full-blown, sectarian civil war.
A real shame, for regular folks, but perhaps inevitable.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/06/2014 9:22
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#2
unfinished business over that Imam Ali thang 1400 years ago
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/06/2014 10:03
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[DAWN] KARACHI: A delegation of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement ...English: United National Movement, generally known as MQM, is the 3rd largest political party and the largest secular political party in Pakistain with particular strength in Sindh. From 1992 to 1999, the MQM was the target of the Pak Army's Operation Cleanup leaving thousands of urdu speaking civilians dead... (MQM) visited the Jamaat-e-Islami ...The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an independent branch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores... (JI) Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... office, Idara Noor-e-Haq, on Saturday.
The MQM delegation, comprising Ameenul Haq, Abdul Haseeb and Rehan Hashmi extended their invitation to JI Karachi Emir Hafiz Naeemur Rehman, to join MQM's rally in solidarity with the armed forces, which is scheduled to be staged at the Bagh-e-Jinnah tomorrow (Sunday).
JI warmly welcomed the MQM delegation but showed reservations in joining the rally.
"Jamaat-e-Islami does not support North Wazoo operation," the JI Karachi Emir said, adding, "We are with the Pakistain Army, but the operation would result in creating differences and rift between our armed forces and the people of tribal areas."
The JI Karachi Emir also asked for an immediate stop to the operation.
Talking to mediapersons, Ameenul Haq said, "We have old relations with Jamaat-e-Islami, and we are here to invite them to our rally."
"We hope for Jamaat-e-Islami to also visit our headquarters, it will improve relations," Haq said.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Taleban militants set fire to dozens of fuel trucks, which they claimed were supplying foreign troops in Afghanistan, in an attack on the outskirts of Kabul, officials said on Saturday. The fire triggered by a bomb set ablaze tankers waiting to enter the city in a parking lot west of the Afghan capital overnight.
"At around 10:30 pm last night, dozens of fuel tankers belonging to private companies caught fire," Hashmat Stanikzai, Kabul police spokesman told AFP. "No one can come close to them since the fire is still raging at the scene."
No casualties were reported as fire fighters tried to control the fire in the morning, he added.
Gul Aghan Hashimi the Crime Investigation Director of Kabul police said "it was a magnetic bomb that caused the fuel tankers to catch on fire," adding that the trucks belonged to private companies. However, it was unclear whether the trucks were supplying fuel to NATO.
A NATO-led International Security Assistance Forces spokesman told AFP they were "looking into the incident to determine if any of the fuel destroyed in Chawk-e Arghandi last night was intended for use by ISAF forces."
Taleban militants who have been regularly attacking western supply convoys in Afghanistan, claimed the responsibility.
"Our brave Sir Robin Mujahideen fighters in a special tactic have set ablaze hundreds of fuel tankers in the west of Kabul, which were supplying fuel and food for foreign forces," Taleban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said a statement.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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[CONNECTICUT.CBSLOCAL] It may not destroy your soul, but it turns out heavy metal music can be hazardous to your brain. At least in some rare cases.
German doctors say they have treated a Motorhead fan whose headbanging habit ultimately led to a brain injury, but that the risk to metal fans in general is so small they don't need to give up the shaking.
Last January, doctors at Hannover Medical School saw a 50-year-old man who complained of constant, worsening headaches. The patient, who was not identified, had no history of head injuries or substance abuse problems but said he had been headbanging regularly for years — most recently at a Motorhead concert he attended with his son.
After a scan, doctors discovered their patient had a brain bleed and needed a hole drilled into his brain to drain the blood. The patient's headaches soon disappeared. In a follow-up scan, the doctors saw he had a benign cyst which might have made the metal aficionado more vulnerable to a brain injury.
"We are not against headbanging," said Dr. Ariyan Pirayesh Islamian, one of the doctors who treated the man. "The risk of injury is very, very low. But I think if (our patient) had (gone) to a classical concert, this would not have happened."
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
But I think if (our patient) had (gone) to a classical concert, this would not have happened.
Um, it wasn't the music, but his headbanging that was the trigger. If he did the same to Mozart, it would have had the same effect.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
07/06/2014 23:27
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[ARABNEWS] The attackers stormed in close to midnight, tearing through town with gasoline bombs and clubs before carting away piles of cash and jewelry they stole from Moslem families in this tiny corner of Sri Lanka.
The onslaught incited by the Bodu Bala Sena, or Buddhist Power Force, a hard-line group that has gained thousands of followers in recent years, killed at least two Moslems and injured dozens more last month in the worst religious violence Sri Lanka has seen in decades.
Now, President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government is under fire, accused of failing to protect Sri Lanka's tiny Moslem minority and allowing radical Buddhists spewing illegal hate speech to operate with impunity for years.
Critics of Rajapaksa's government say it has turned a blind eye to the violence as a way to shore up its core constituency — the Sinhalese Buddhist population — which makes up about 75 percent of Sri Lanka's 20 million people.
"At the root of the failure of the government to check the violence is electoral politics," said Jehan Perera, head of the National Peace Council, a local peace activist group in Sri Lanka. "If the Sinhalese voters feel insecure for any reason they will tend to vote for the present government, which is seen as strong and pro-Sinhalese."
But the most recent violence has drawn rare — and harsh — criticism from inside Sri Lanka, with the media, moderate Buddhists and even the justice minister slamming Rajapaksa's seeming unwillingness to safeguard Moslems.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[ARABNEWS] Stay away from sectarianism, Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, president of the Two Holy Mosques Affairs, told the more than 1 million worshippers who crowded the Grand Mosque during Friday prayers amid tight security.
Al-Sudais alluded to the sectarian strife and conflicts tearing apart Moslem countries.
"Moslems around the world fast and pray as they witness what is going on in Paleostine and Syria," he said. Al-Sudais warned against bloodshed and urged crisis resolution. Worshippers were kept cool by the more than 250 fans distributed around the Grand Mosque. The Prophet's Mosque in Madinah, by contrast, saw around half a million worshippers attend Friday prayers.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2014
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#2
Unfortunately Muslims are as incompetent at tearing themselves apart as they are at everything else. They just make a mess but never finish the job.
[IsraelTimes] Paleostinians in Hebron living adjacent to the Israeli-controlled part of the city have set up a neighborhood watch fearing reprisal attacks by settlers for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens on June 12.
According to an Israel Radio report on Saturday, a hotline was also set up to report any suspicious activity by settlers in the divided city.
The two prime suspects in the kidnapping and murder of Naftali Fraenkel, Eyal Yifrach and Gil-ad Shaar, are Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, men from Hebron.
The bodies of the three Israeli teens were found last Monday, after an 18-day search, near the Paleostinian town of Halhul, north of the city, in a plot of land recently purchased by the family of one of the suspects, Marwan Kawasme. He along with Amer Abu Aysha are currently being sought by the IDF. A third Hamas man from Hebron, Husam Dofsh, is also being sought.
Also on Saturday, a Paleostinian man was reportedly beaten by settlers near the West Bank town of Nablus.
Paleostinian media reported that Tarek Adili from the town of Osarin was "kidnapped" by settlers, severely beaten and left for dead. He was being treated at hospital in Nablus.
Police were still investigating the murder of Paleostinian teenager Muhammed Abu Kdheir, 16, from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat, whose body was found Wednesday in a Jerusalem forest in what is believed to be a Dire Revenge™ attack for the killing of the three Israeli teenagers who were laid to rest on Tuesday.
[Ynet] Former intelligence chief Yadlin: There is Israeli deterrence in Gazoo. Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, could fire hundreds of rockets at Tel Aviv and Beersheba, but it doesn't.
It has become a ritual. Every time tensions rise in the south of Israel and calls for a major IDF operation in the Gazoo Strip arise, Hamas' military wing launches a psychological attack in an attempt to create panic among the Israeli public. The messages are transmitted via a short video in Hebrew (at times, broken Hebrew) and usually include images of rockets front and center. It seems that this tradition is here to stay and a new video clip was released Saturday.
Video can be seen at the link, for those who like such things. Just click ion the headline.
Former Military Intelligence head Maj.-Gen. (res) Amos Yadlin said Saturday morning that "it is not true that there isn't Israeli deterrence in Gazoo. Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, could fire hundreds of rockets at Tel Aviv and Beersheba, but it doesn't. So, the deterrence exists, but it's not absolute. I have no doubt we are facing another round of hostilities against Hamas and we need to make sure it's done under optimal conditions for Israel".
"Hillary Clinton continued to justify her high-dollar speaking fees on Friday, telling ABC News' Ann Compton that all of the money she's made from colleges over the past year and a half has been donated to her family's foundation." ...heh...
#6
Rambler's got it. It's what any NFL player does -- start a 'charity' "for the children." Who runs the charity? His brother, mother and third cousin. They all get salaries and expenses. Of course, they DO make sure to have a charitable event here and there so they stay within the letter of the law.
Hillary's not even doing the charity part of this. The Clinton Foundation is all about having and building a power machine that looks after the family business, which is all politics, all the time.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/06/2014 10:57
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#7
nice article on the failure of the Clinton Initiative in Haiti (which had Hillary as Sec of State monitoring a Bill as head of foundation project)
#9
Well, she did set things to right after the fact, didn't she? Well, she did, didn't she? C'mon people, where is the forgiveness, where's the love?
=======================
Hmmm...Lies, no moral compass, enabled by the MSM. How did things go this far, for so long?
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/06/2014 14:50
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#10
Gee, AP, that's part of what the money is for...
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/06/2014 18:12
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[ARABNEWS] A Saudi who reportedly went to fight abroad a year-and-a-half ago has surrendered himself to the Saudi Embassy in Amman, said Sami Al-Saleh, Saudi ambassador to Jordan.
Khalaf Al-Enezi from Arar had left his hometown to fight in Syria.
Al-Enezi is expected to reach the Kingdom within a few days following Jordanian-Saudi coordination.
He worked as a preacher at a local mosque in Arar. Al-Enezi's mother was overjoyed to hear the news of his surrender.
"The embassy did not interrogate him about his stay in Syria nor who he was fighting with," said Saleh.
The embassy bought him his return ticket home.
Al-Saleh reiterated the embassy's keenness on taking care of the affairs of former Saudi fighters from the time they surrender until they get home.
Mohammad Al-Bluwi, the embassy's front man said the embassy has no further comment on the matter.
"The citizen is in good health and will be flown to the Kingdom within a few days," read the statement.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2014
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#1
Thats the problem Saudis are treated as heroes when they return from Jihad.
[DAWN] Gullu "Stinky" Butt, the baton-wielding man seen damaging vehicles in Lahore, filed a bail petition in a local court on Saturday, DawnNews reported.
The petition was filed in Judicial Magistrate Imran Ishaq's court.
The petition submitted by Advocate Wahid Hussain presented the stance that the case registered against Butt was a false one thus he should be released on bail.
The court summoned a record from the police on July 10.
Butt, also known as Sher-e-Lahore, came into the limelight after he was caught on cameras brazenly damaging several vehicles in the presence of police, during the clash between Pakistain Awami Tehrik workers and police in Lahore's Model Town on June 17.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2014
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President Park Geun-hye and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday confirmed their strong opposition to North Korea's nuclear weapons program. The two leaders described bilateral ties as having reached an "unprecedented level of strategic understanding" and vowed to bolster cooperation in security, politics, the economy and culture.
Pudgy's just gotta be having a conniption over the canoodling of these two...
In a joint statement they pledged cooperation in promoting development in their respective countries and ensuring peace in Northeast Asia.
"Our two leaders share the view that we must realize North Korea's denuclearization and resolutely oppose another nuclear test," Park told reporters after their meeting. Xi's visit "will serve as a clear message for denuclearization of North Korea."
Xi said, "Relevant nations should steadily pursue the six-party process and hold bilateral and multilateral talks to coordinate and resolve mutual concerns." The comments were seen as a call to North Korea to return to the negotiating table without attaching any conditions.
So China still wants the multi-lateral talks that haven't solved anything.
Xi added that Beijing supports improved inter-Korean relations and ultimately peace on the Korean Peninsula.
Preferably as a Chinese client-state...
Park and Xi also signed a memorandum of understanding to establish direct won-yuan exchange, which would eliminate the need to exchange either currency into U.S. dollars when settling accounts. Bilateral trade amounted to US$230 billion last year, and most settlements were done in dollars. In future the Seoul branch of a Chinese bank will serve as the clearing house for financial settlements.
China also plans to grant Korea the Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (RQFII) status, which allows unprecedented access to China’s onshore equity and fixed income securities markets. Korea's RFQII investment ceiling will be set at 80 billion yuan.
Seems like the world, more and more, doesn't need the U.S.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/06/2014
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#1
Are these commitments like Obama's feet of clay and line in the sand commitments?
#1
...As the article suggests, Patriot is designed to sweep the skies clear of ANYTHING, and it does a pretty damned good job of it. The problem is that our training and IFF/ID systems and procedures aren't as advanced as the weapons.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
07/06/2014 10:13
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#2
Kill boxes. Avoid them, zoomies. Or fly low and hard, like the A-10
Several people were killed when a powerful suicide car bomb exploded near Somalia's parliament in the capital Mogadishu on Saturday, police and witnesses said. AlQaeda-linked al Shabaab rebels claimed responsibility for the bombing, the latest in a surge of attacks in Mogadishu during Islam's holy month of Ramadhan.
"A car loaded with explosives was intercepted near the parliament and it went off. There are casualties but we don't have details so far," police official Mohamed Idle told AFP. He confirmed a suicide bomber was in the car.
Police and witnesses at the scene said three police officers and the suicide bomber died in the blast.
"I saw the dead bodies of three police and the severed body parts of what looked like the suicide bomber under the wreckage of the detonated car. The police sealed off the area and all civilians were ordered to leave," said eyewitness Ahmed Malin.
Several other witnesses said they saw ambulances taking away the wounded, most of them civilians collected from the scene of the explosion. Abdikarim Jirow, another witness, said around nine wounded persons have been carried out of the attack scene.
An AFP photographer saw around 13 wounded civilians, seven of them internally displaced people who lived at a camp near the attack scene.
The al Shabaab said they were responsible and vowed their attacks would continue.
"We killed more than a dozen so-called police members after sacrificial attack at the main entrance of parliament buildings," Abdulaziz Abu Musab, military spokesman of the al Shabaab, told AFP. "We want to tell them that the MPs are not safe anywhere in Mogadishu. By the grace of Allah more attacks will come and continue."
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/06/2014
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[DAWN] A police constable was rubbed out in Sohrab Goth on Friday morning, officials said.
They added that Allah Dino Mahar, 35, was taking water for his flat in Maymar Complex when gunnies opened fire on him and fled.
The police said he was taken to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, where he was given medical treatment. Doctor said he had sustained two gunshot wounds in the neck and shoulder. After being provided with first aid, he was rushed to a private hospital on National Stadium Road where he died during treatment, the officials added.
They added that the victim hailed from Gambat in Khairpur district and was posted in the Garden police headquarters.
The police were investigating motive for the murder, said Sohrab Goth SHO Shoaib Ahmed.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2014
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Chicago was hit with a burst of gun violence on the Fourth of July, with at least 21 people shot during an 11-hour stretch from Friday evening into Saturday morning, according to police.
That brings to 36 the number of people who have been shot in the city since the long holiday weekend began Thursday afternoon, when two women were hit by gunfire as they sat on a porch just a block from Garfield Park on the West Side.
The holiday shootings have stretched across the city but have been concentrated in the South and West sides. The Englewood and Harrison districts have both seen a handful of people shot over the last two days, and there have been shootings as far south as the Altgeld Gardens neighborhood at the edge of the city to the Rogers Park neighborhood bordering Evanston.
Three of those wounded were shot by police officers in Portage Park, Rogers Park and Englewood. The man shot in Portage Park, around 9:50 p.m., died.
#2
But, but, how could this possibly happen? Guns are illegal in Chicago!!!
I know - the solution is to make it even harder for law abiding citizens to own guns. That will solve the problem!!!
/sarcasm, in case you hadn't figured it out
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
07/06/2014 2:22
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#3
natural selection noun - The process by which forms of life having traits that better enable them to adapt to specific environmental pressures, as predators, changes in climate, or competition for food or mates, will tend to survive and reproduce in greater numbers than others of their kind, thus ensuring the perpetuation of those favorable traits in succeeding generations.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/06/2014 7:57
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#5
Cartel gang members are often very young. Some of these kids have already "made their bones (made several hits)" at an early age. Maybe some of these these young killers in the Mexican diaspora will be relocated to Chicago. I have read that Obama is looking for another place to live after his occupation of the WH.
#6
Nice B. However, it's not natural selection when the farmer intentionally breeds stock. The farmer creates an artificial environment with the intent of seeking some traits or characteristics that the farmer determines is desirable, among those are docility to his control. However, in such artificial breeding, other traits have a tendency to appear which result in unintended and undesirable consequences. In this case the farmer/pols have clear cut the fickle middle class to make room for a more reliable voting stock, the base commodity of machine politics. As they sowed, so they shall reap.
It appears that Israel is finally be (sic) attacking Gaza in retaliation for all the mortars and rockets launched over the past few days.
On Saturday, Gazan rockets targeted the city of Beer Sheva. One of the rockets was shot down by the Iron Dome system.
Citizens as far away as Beer Sheva and Ashdod are reporting hearing explosions and the ground shaking as Israeli Air Force planes launch missiles at targets in Gaza.
3:16 AM: Multiple targets were reported hit, no one was injured in the IAF attacks, but significant damage is reported.
Khan Younis, north Gaza, Rafiach and central Gaza are reportedly being hit by the Israel Air Force.
A Fajr missile storage facility was destroyed, a weapons production facility was destroyed,and a Hamas facility was hit hard. A tunnel near Rafiach was also destroyed.
4:06 AM No Hamas terrorists have been reported killed in any of the strikes.
4:08 AM IDF Spokesman reports that IAF jets hit 10 terror targets in Gaza.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/06/2014
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[Ynet] Lebanese paper Al Akhbar reports Mwafaq Badiyeh was killed by explosive planted on his car by Israeli agents; Syrian opposition says he died in battle against rebels.
Three weeks ago, Mwafaq Badiyeh, Samir Kuntar's "right hand man," was killed when his car went kaboom!. Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar, that is affiliated with Hezbollah and the Assad regime, quoted officials on Saturday who claimed it was "Mossad agents" who assassinated Badiyeh.
Syrian opposition, however, said Badiyeh was killed in battles against rebels.
According to the report, Badiyeh was assassinated on June 17 when his car went kaboom! in the Durin area, while driving on the main road between Quneitra and Damascus.
"Security sources" told the paper that Badiyeh's car's kaboom was caused by an bomb planted on his car by "Mossad agents."
These sources claim the liquidation was a response to rockets fired from Syria to Israel in March, that the Syrian army and Hezbollah were responsible for.
Local sources told Al Akhbar that Badiyeh, of Druze descent, was a part of the military presence in the Quneitra district that was operating against Israeli targets in the Golan.
Syrian opposition websites characterized Badiyeh as the right hand man of Samir Kuntar, the terrorist who murdered four Israelis in a 1979 attack in Nahariya, among them the Haran family. Kuntar was freed from Israeli jail in a deal signed with Hezbollah in 2008 to retrieve the bodies of IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.
The village of Hadar, where Badiyeh was born and resided until his death, is one of the only villages in the Syrian Golan Heights that remains loyal to Bashir al-Assad's regime, apart from Quneitra. Semi-military militias loyal to the Syrian president operate in this area. These militias also have ties with Hezbollah.
[An Nahar] Sunni Mohammedan religious scholar Yusef al-Qaradawi ...crackpot Egyptian Islamist theologian. He is best known for his program Shariah and Life on Al Jazeera, with an estimated audience of 60 million kindred souls worldwide. He is also well-known for IslamOnline, which occasionally advocates things like slavery and thumping the old lady with a rod no thicker than an inch, and has published more than 120 books, including Islam: The Future Civilization. Joe has long had a prominent role within the intellectual leadership of the Moslem Brüderbund. Some of his views have been controversial in the West, though less so among the rubes of the Mysterious East, and he was refused entry to the United Kingdom in 2008. In 2004, 2,500 Muslim academics from Saudi Arabia, Iraq and from the Palestinian territories condemned Qaradawi, and accused him of giving Islam a bad name.... said on Saturday that the declaration of an Islamic caliphate by jihadists fighting the governments in Syria and Iraq violates sharia law.
Last Sunday, the jihadists declared an "Islamic caliphate" in areas they control in Iraq and Syria and ordered Mohammedans worldwide to pledge allegiance to their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Qatar-based Qaradawi, seen as a spiritual guide of the Moslem Brüderbund in his native Egypt, said in a statement that the declaration "is void under sharia."
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2014
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#1
...Oh, yeah, that'll stop 'em dead in their tracks.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
07/06/2014 8:37
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#2
massacre of Shiites - no problem
killing and oppression of infidels - no problem
destruction of shrine - no problem
oppression of non extremist sunni - no problem
challenging my authority - we have a problem
Posted by: lord garth ||
07/06/2014 11:59
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[An Nahar] Eight members of a single family were killed on Saturday when Syrian aircraft dropped explosive-packed barrel bombs on a town in the southern Syrian province of Daraa, a monitor said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a man, his wife and their six children were killed in the raid in the town of Dael.
Another man was killed in barrel bomb raids elsewhere in the southern province, the Britannia-based group said.
A video from Dael showed men carrying the remains of bodies after the attack.
"This is all that remains of the family," one man says.
"Where is Arab pride in the holy month of Ramadan? This is what is happening to children."
Syrian regime forces control Daraa city, but the province is divided between rebel and government control.
Elsewhere, the Observatory said 15 Syrian Kurdish fighters had been killed since Friday in festivities with the jihadist Islamic State (IS) group in the Zur Maghar area of Aleppo province in north Syria.
The IS seized Zur Maghar and nearby Bayada on Friday as it continues to battle rebel forces elsewhere in northern Syria.
Alongside that front, regime troops have made new advances on the outskirts of eastern Aleppo.
The city, once Syria's economic hub, has been divided between rebel control in the east and government control in the west since shortly after fighting erupted there in summer 2012.
But regime forces have in recent days begun to encircle the eastern outskirts of the city, seizing the Sheikh Najjar industrial sector to the northeast and threatening rebel supply routes.
In addition to battling the regime, rebels have been fighting the IS, previously known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ... the current version of al-Qaeda in Iraq, just as blood-thirsty and well-beloved as the original... , since January.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2014
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#1
'Barell Bombs' - Amnesty Intl? UN? Silence. What happens when they run out of Syrians?
[Libya Herald] Fifty-six individuals including military personnel, members of the security forces and civilians are currently being held following kidnappings in Benghazi.
The figure of 56 is a significant increase on the 43 reported by Saiqa Special Forces ...Libya's elite army unit, insofar as they have one, formed from a mixture of paratroopers and commandos. The group emerged from a militia with the same name in 2010. It now numbers a few thousand and reports to the Ministry of Defence. It deployed in Benghazi in an attempt to control the carnage. As a result, it has been attacked and several of its officers murdered. The force is popular in Benghazi for its stance against Ansar al-Sharia group... one week ago.
The new figure includes a woman and five girls of between 16 and 17 years of age.
Head of Saiqa Special Forces Investigations Unit Fadel Al-Hassi told the Libya Herald that of those kidnapped eight were members of Saiqa, four were coppers and two members of the intelligence services. Additionally 39 civilians have been kidnapped, including two Egyptians and a Paleostinian.
Fassi added that security officials were doing all within their power to discover the whereabouts of those of the victims but that Saiqa and its partners faced an uphill struggle given the city's security situation.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2014
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[Tolo News] At least 38 Taliban Death Eaters and two border coppers were killed in festivities in southern Paktia province on Friday night, local officials said.
The clash took place in Dand-e Patan district of the province after Afghan and Pak Taliban Death Eaters attacked a border police outpost, said Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai, a front man for the border police.
"The bodies of Pak Taliban Death Eater's were seen on the ground," he said.
There were no civilian casualties during the festivities, he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2014
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[Tolo News] A day after his return from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Zia-ul-Haq Amarkhail, former Chief Secretariat for the Independent Elections Commission (IEC), rejected the allegations of his "plot" to escape Afghanistan, at a presser in Kabul on Saturday.
"I went to the UAE with my Afghan passport just for two or three days and that too for treatments," Amarkhail said at the conference.
Amarkhail departed Kabul for the UAE on Monday evening. His departure received harsh criticism from those who believe he should be present to answer for the accusations of fraud that have been filed against him, and if found guilty, suffer the consequences.
Over a week ago, Abdullah Abdullah ... the former foreign minister of the Northern Alliance government, advisor to Masood, and candidate for president against Karzai. Dr. Abdullah was born in Kabul and is half Tadjik and half Pashtun... 's presidential candidate team released audio recordings supposedly exposing Amarkhail of coordinating plans for ballot stuffing during the runoff with members of the Ashraf Ghani-Ahmadzai team as well as local officials in a number of provinces.
He quickly resigned from his post at the IEC while denying the veracity of the accusations against him.
At Saturday's presser, Amarkhail reiterated that the audiotapes released by Abdullah's team was not authentic, "it's a fake," he said.
"I resigned so that Abdullah returns to the election process," he explained.
Amarkhail also said that the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) should investigate the cases filed against him.
He emphasized at the presser that there were many plots against him during the election process.
On Thursday IEC Chairman, Ahmad Yusef Nuristani, said that Amarkhail is guilty adding that his alleged involvement in fraud has threatened the entire election process.
Initially, Nuristani did not believe the evidence provided was that of Amarkhail's, but after listening to the recorded phone conversations his views on Amarkhail changed.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[ARABNEWS] An Iranian pilot has been killed while fighting in Iraq, state media reported Saturday, in what is thought to be Tehran's first military casualty during battles against Islamic State fighters.
Iran's official IRNA news agency did not say whether the pilot died while flying sorties or fighting on the ground.
It said Col. Shoja'at Alamdari Mourjani was killed while "defending" Shiite holy sites in the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad.
His death comes after Iran's declarations that it will provide its western neighbor with whatever it needs to counter the faceless myrmidons who are laying siege to the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki.
Samarra is a major flashpoint in the fighting and is home to the Shiite Al-Askari shrine which was bombed by Al-Qaeda in February 2006, sparking a bloody Sunni-Shiite sectarian war that killed tens of thousands.
The reports of the pilot's death came as Iranian officials insist their assistance is not in the form of troops, but rather of weapons and equipment if Iraq asks for them.
The Fars news agency appeared to confirm the IRNA report, publishing photos of a funeral service for the pilot on Friday in his home province of Fars, in southern Iran.
Fars did not give any details, but hinted that Alamdari Mourjani was a member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, whose elite Quds Force is believed to be on the ground and assisting Iraqi forces, despite Tehran's denials.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[Iran Press TV] The Nigerian army says it has killed more than 50 members of the 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... Takfiri ...an adherent of takfir wal hijra, an offshoot of Salafism that regards everybody who doesn't agree with them as apostates who most be killed... group after it repulsed an assault on a military base in a northeastern town.
Nigeria's Director of Defense Information Major General Chris Olukolade said in a statement on Saturday that some 53 Boko Haram members had been killed after they engaged in a shootout with Nigerian forces in the northeastern town of Damboa on Friday night.
According to the statement, five soldiers and a senior military officer were also killed in the fire fight.
Nigerian police said earlier that Boko Haram attacked the Damboa base in the Borno state with rocket-propelled grenades.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2014
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[DAWN] NOWSHERA: A couple was rubbed out by relatives for marrying without their consent here on Friday.
Police said that the couple was bumped off while fleeing in a car on the GT road in Kandar area. The couple had got married some six month ago on their own free will and had been living secretly ever since.
Nowshera Kalan police brought the bodies to the district headquarters hospital for an appointment with Dr. Quincy. Hospital sources said that the brother of the dear departed man, resident of Khurabad, Rashakai, said that the victims had married secretly after their respective families didn't allow them to tie the knot.
Girl's father, belonging to Mardan and his two sons, and the two brothers of the dear departed man were accused of killing the couple. Nowshera Kalan police registered case and began investigation.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2014
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Somewhere near Qoryoley, wherever the hell that is -- An intense confrontation which resulted in severe fatalities such as casualties and losses erupted between co-allied Somali National Army soldiers and African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) forces against Al-Shabaab on the outskirts of Qoryoley district.
The physical conflict was initiated after fighters from the Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist group Al-Shabaab, launched a guerilla-style attack on the joint AMISOM and government troops on the periphery of the district in the Lower Shabelle region.
Despite the precise numbers of fatalities not being specified yet, locals residing near the town have told Shabelle that the atmosphere and security situation in the area is mounted with strong tension in the environment.
The Qoryoley District Commissioner, Mohamed Haji Osman, reported to Shabelle that the confrontation was contained almost immediately after the battle broke out whereby several of the terrorist insurgents were killed by the government soldiers.
Neighborhoods under the Qoryoley district in the Lower Shabelle region are among ones in which frequent fights and battles break out often between AMISOM and Somali National Army against the Al-Shabaab terrorist group.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/06/2014
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[NYTimes] The details of the latest case were murky. The news media reports suggested that the man, a midlevel employee of the Federal Intelligence Service, was originally arrested on suspicion of spying for Russia. The Kremlin has markedly stepped up recruitment of German informants since the uprisings in Ukraine and the resulting sanctions aimed at Russia's economy.
But according to the news reports and the account of the American official, the man told his interrogators he had been working for the United States for some time.
But in conversations with German officials over the past year, the Obama administration has made it clear that its Not gonna' spy on you no more
commitment extends only to Ms. Merkel herself, and not other German officials. That was one of many sources of tension as the two countries, which traditionally share intelligence on terrorism suspects and nuclear proliferation, struggled and failed to reach a new accord.
Why is anyone surprised? Of course intel agencies spy on other countries, friend and foe alike. The crime isn't spying, the crime is getting caught.
Iraq's prime minister removed the chief of the army's ground forces and the head of the federal police from their posts Saturday as part of his promised shakeup in the security forces following their near collapse in the face of a militant blitz last month, an official said.
Military spokesman Lt. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi says Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed the papers to retire Lt. Gen. Ali Ghaidan, commander of the army's ground forces, and Lt. Gen. Mohsen al-Kaabi, the chief of the federal police. Al-Moussawi says both men leave their jobs with their pensions. No replacements have been named.
Iraqi military forces in the city of Mosul and across much of the country's north melted away in the face of the militant offensive spearheaded by the Islamic State extremist group. Shiite militiamen and volunteers have had to fill the void as the regular army struggles to regroup.
Last month, al-Maliki retired three generals who had been deployed in Mosul and ordered legal proceedings against them. He also dismissed a brigadier general and ordered his court martial in absentia. He said he planned to retire off or court martial more senior officers, but gave no details.
Al-Maliki has also vowed to bring the full weight of military law, including the execution of deserters, on anyone who is found out to have fled the battle.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/06/2014
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Jihadists who overran Mosul last month have demolished ancient shrines and mosques in and around the historic northern Iraqi city, residents and social media posts said Saturday.
At least four shrines to Sunni Arab or Sufi figures have been demolished, while six Shiite mosques, or husseiniyahs, have also been destroyed, across militant-held parts of northern Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital.
Pictures posted on the Internet by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) showed the Sunni and Sufi shrines were demolished by bulldozers, while the Shiite mosques and shrines were all destroyed by explosives. The photographs were part of an online statement titled "Demolishing shrines and idols in the state of Nineveh."
Local residents confirmed that the buildings had been destroyed and that militants had occupied two cathedrals as well.
"We feel very sad for the demolition of these shrines, which we inherited from our fathers and grandfathers," said Ahmed, a 51-year-old resident of Mosul. "They are landmarks in the city."
An employee at Mosul's Chaldean cathedral said militants had occupied both it and the Syrian Orthodox cathedral in the city after finding them empty. They removed the crosses at the front of the buildings and replaced them with the Islamic State's black flag, the employee said.
Mosul, home to two million residents before the offensive, was a Middle East trading hub for centuries, its name translating loosely as "the junction." Though more recently populated mostly by Sunni Arabs, Mosul and Nineveh were also home to many Shiite Arabs as well as ethnic and religious minorities such as Kurds, Turkmen, Yazidis and other sects.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/06/2014
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Ukrainian army has fired artillery into residential regions of Luhansk and left power stations damaged. The attack happened on Friday night and cut off power supplies in the eastern parts of Luhansk.
"As a result of damage done to a high-voltage transmission line, the residents of the Zhovtnevy district were disconnected from power supplies," the press service of the Luhansk Town Hall said.
"Since the water pumping stations are cut off from power supplies too, there is no tap water at the households located in the eastern districts of the city," the service said.
The Ukrainian military forces also carried out two airstrikes on Wednesday on the densely-populated residential areas of the Cossack settlement of Luhansk, causing numerous casualties and major devastation.
This comes after the foreign ministers of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany on Wednesday agreed on a series of measures for the resumption of a new ceasefire in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine's mainly Russian-speaking parts in the east have been the scene of deadly clashes between pro-Russia protesters and the Ukrainian army since Kiev launched military operations in mid-April in a bid to crush the pro-Moscow protests. The government in Kiev says it is targeting armed protesters, but reports say many civilians have been caught in the fighting.
The violence intensified after Donetsk and Luhansk held local referendums on May 11, in which their residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence from Ukraine.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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An Egyptian court sentenced Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie to life in prison on Saturday, Egypt’s ON TV said, for inciting the violence that erupted after the army deposed President Mohammed Mursi last year.
Badie, convicted along with some 36 other Brotherhood leaders and supporters for the same crime, is facing the death sentence in two separate cases.
The court also upheld death sentences for 10 other Brotherhood supporters.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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[IN.REUTERS] The Iraqi government said on Saturday that a video posted online purporting to show the reclusive leader of the militant group Islamic State praying in the northern city of Mosul was falsified.
Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan told Reuters that the footage posted on the Internet on Saturday allegedly showing Abu Bakr el-Baghdadi at Mosul's grand mosque was "indisputably" not him.
"We have analysed the footage ... and found it is a farce," he said.
Maan said government forces had recently wounded Baghdadi in an air strike and that he had been transferred by Islamic State militants to Syria for medical treatment. He declined to give further details and there was no way to confirm the claim independently.
The 21-minute video came after reports on social media that Baghdadi would make his first public appearance since his Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) changed its name to the Islamic State and declared him caliph - a title held by successors of the Prophet Mohammad.
Mosul, northern Iraq's biggest city, was overrun on June 10 early in an offensive that saw vast parts of Iraq's majority Sunni regions fall to the Islamic State and allied groups.
The Iraqi government has in the past made claims to have captured wanted Sunni militants only to announce later that the men were still at large.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2014
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Two suspected Al Qaeda militants blew themselves up on Saturday after being trapped inside a government building in southern Saudi Arabia, the Interior Ministry said, following an attack on a border post with Yemen that also killed four security men.
An Interior Ministry spokesman said the pair were part of a group of six Al Qaeda militants who attacked the Wadia border post on Friday from Yemen. Three of the militants were killed on Friday and a fourth was captured after being injured.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, has long viewed its 1,800km border with impoverished, conflict-ridden Yemen as a major security problem and has been building a fence to deter militants and criminals.
But fences don't work. The Democrats tell us that all the time...
Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour Al Turki said security forces surrounded the two men in the second floor of the local intelligence service building in Al Sharurah area after they had forced their way into the building on Friday. They were invited to surrender.
"Throw yer rods in the dirt and git yer mitts in da air, or its coitains for youse guys!"
“At an early hour this morning... the two attackers resorted to blowing themselves up,” Turki said in remarks carried by state news SPA.
"You'll never take us alive, flatfeet!"
Saudi-owned Al Arabia television earlier reported that the militants had put up “stiff resistance” to security forces surrounding them, firing automatic weapons and hurling grenades at security forces, but there were no reports of casualties.
Typical for that part of the world...
Turki said Friday’s attack began when six militants in a car with licence plates from an unspecified Gulf Arab country arrived at the Wadia checkpoint in the Empty Quarter desert area, which links Yemen’s Hadramout province with Saudi Arabia.
The militants shot and killed the commander of a Saudi border patrol and seized his car. They made their way inside Saudi territory towards Al Sharurah. Security forces engaged the militants in the second car, killing three and capturing the fourth. The militants also killed two other security men during the clash, Turki said.
Saudi media had earlier said the six were all Saudi nationals. Turki said authorities were conducting tests to determine the identities of the militants.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/06/2014
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#1
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan must have the highest percentage of sunni jihadis.
[ARABNEWS] Egyptian judicial officials say a Cairo court has upheld death sentences against 10 members of the banned Moslem Brüderbund and sentenced 38 others to life, including the spiritual leader of the Islamist group.
All 10 Brotherhood members whose death sentences were confirmed were tried in absentia.
The 48 were found guilty of inciting violence, attacking security forces and blocking a main road north of Cairo last year, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Saturday's verdicts are part of an ongoing crackdown against Islamists that began after the military's ouster last year of President Muhammad Mursi, who hails from the Brotherhood. He, together with spiritual leader Mohammed Badie, are in detention and face multiple trials.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2014
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[BREITBART] MURRIETA -- An American flag has reportedly been burned by pro-amnesty protesters near the Murrieta Border Patrol station on America's Independence Day.
Breitbart News obtained the above photograph, which shows a burnt flag on the ground, from an anti-illegal immigration activist who was monitoring the pro-amnesty demonstration.
Opponents of illegal immigration had gathered in Murrieta to stop Friday's planned transfer of Central American illegal aliens, as they did earlier this week. A pro-amnesty counter-demonstration was organized in response.
The illegal aliens, many of them unaccompanied children, are being brought from overcrowded Texas detention facilities for processing in California.
In addition, Breitbart News obtained photographs of torn-up flags that pro-amnesty demonstrators had impaled on a fence.
Bonnie Lewis, an anti-illegal immigration activist, told Breitbart News that she saw one of the pro-amnesty activists dragging an American flag on the ground.
"I said: 'Hey, don't do that.' He said: 'That's where it belongs,'" she said.
Another anti-illegal immigration activist said that pro-amnesty demonstrators called her a "f***ing whore" i Spanish, and shouted, "F*** America!"
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2014
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#1
"Por La Raza Todo- Fuera La Raza Nada"! /sarc off
#4
For the pro-amnesty asshats described in this article I have only two words, loud and beginning with an F and a Y. As for the dipshit whose smug retort was "...Reconquista baby" the same applies!
#5
g(r)mgoru, perhaps you assume that all Hispanics are devout Catholics. This is not necessarily a valid assumption...
But, hey, when they carry Mexican flags and burn American flags at least they're good enough to let us know exactly who they are and what they want. If we let them have it we will deserve the loss.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
07/06/2014 15:51
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#6
drudge is now reporting the feds are bringing riot squads in to ensure the illegals get in. concrete barricades and water cannon tower also.
may not be pretty
#7
It is past time to recognize that the White House is firmly convinced that the Republicans in the House will not before the election, and perhaps never, will try to impeach the President because of his color. It would rally support along racial/ethnic/party lines and is doomed to fail in the Senate, even after 2014 elections. Thus increasingly, they are more open in their actions both to inflame the right and transform the nation into a workers paradise. However, the power to impeach does not merely cover the President, but a much wider field of Cabinet appointees and even the judiciary (remember AlCee Hastings?) Consider Holder, and more immediately, the Secretary of DHS, and think about the chilling effect several impeachments might have on those whose Obama has made feel immune from public anger! This wholesale failure to enforce the law at its most fundamental level must be stopped......
[DAWN] An anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Lahore on Saturday charged five suspects in connection with the murder of 25-year-old Farzana Iqbal who was stoned to death outside the Lahore High Court, DawnNews reported.
The case was heard by Judge Haroon Latif of ATC-III.
The preliminary report submitted by the police in the court nominated the names of five people, including the victim's father Azeem, two brothers Ghulam Ali and Zahid Iqbal, former husband Mazhar Abbas and a close relative Jahan Khan, as responsible for the murder.
The court indicted all five suspects today.
The court summoned all witnesses on July 7 and subsequently adjourned the hearing of the case to the said date.
Farzana Parveen was murdered on May 27 outside the Lahore High Court in a so-called honour killing by more than two dozen attackers, including her brother and father, for marrying against her family's wishes.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... had demanded "immediate action" over the brutal murder.
The brazen, brutal nature of the killing, in broad daylight in the centre of Pakistain's second largest city, fired up the rubes around the world.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[Washington Post] Ukraine's president has hailed as the "start of a turning point" his troops' success in driving out pro-Russian insurgents from a key rebel stronghold in the east.
Petro Poroshenko said the recapture of the city of Slovyansk was "not a total victory." But he said in a statement posted online that the move carried symbolic significance and marked a turning point "in the battle against the rebels for the territorial integrity of Ukraine."
After a night of heavy fighting, Ukrainian forces chased rebels from Slovyansk, which had been under the insurgents' control since early April. The rebels vowed to regroup elsewhere and fight on.
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[DAWN] KARACHI: A kaboom outside a mosque on New Preedy Street in Saddar on Friday noon killed at least two people and injured two others, according to police and hospital officials.
One of the two deceased or both might be transporting the improvised bomb attached with steel nails on a cycle of violence when it went kaboom! due to mishandling, believed police sources.
The bomb, weighing between two and four kilograms, went kaboom! due to 'mishandling' according to initial report of investigation, Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... police chief Ghulam Qadir Thebo told Dawn.
He said it seemed that the mosque, Jamia Masjid Muhajir Makki, and its neighbouring seminary, Mahd-ul-Irshad Islami Madressah, were not the actual target.
The police sources said that the possible target could be the nearby rally of a religious group, Jamaatud Da'awa, and the bomb went kaboom! on a moving cycle of violence due to some mishandling.
A police official who wished not to be named also told Dawn that the possible target could be a rally organised by Jamaatud Da'awa at the mausoleum of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah, as its offices and properties had been recently targeted with planted bombs at Nipa, old Sabzi Mandi and Gulshan-e-Hadeed. The blast was so powerful that it damaged the glasses of the unused multi-storey Parking Plaza across the road and destroyed two motorbikes.
CID police counter-terror chief Raja Umer Khattab said that it emerged during the initial investigation that it was not suicide kaboom. "No suicide jacket was found at the blast site," he said.
He said the police Sherlocks were treating both the dear departed as possible suspects, because the bodies were badly damaged and both sustained wounds caused by kaboom on their right side of the bodies.
"It is yet to be ascertained as to whether they were riding separate motorbikes or one motorbike," the CID chief added.
Identity of the dear departed
"We received one body in fragmented pieces while the other body though badly damaged was intact," said police surgeon Dr Jalil Qadir.
He said the right arm as well as the right side of the head and brain substance were missing. However, there's more than one way to stuff a chicken... the body's left side was intact that could help the Sherlocks to identify him.
The other body, which was relatively in a better position despite fractured limbs and chest and abdomen exposed, was identified as that of Abdul Fatah Dahiri, because the face was intact and recognisable.
The police said one of the dear departed was identified as Abdul Fatah Dahiri, originally hailing from Daulatpur, Nawabshah, and resident of Khandu Goth, Nazimabad. They quoted his wife as telling the police that he used to leave home in the morning as he dealt in mobile phones and return home at night.
However, a woman is only as old as she admits... a hospital official said the brother of the dear departed who arrived at the JPMC mortuary to receive the body told the hospital administration that Dahiri ran a video shop in Khandu Goth.
Motorbikes
An official at the Brigade cop shoppe said one of the destroyed motorbikes was owned by a resident of Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Amir Sultan, and the police Sherlocks were trying to ascertain as to whether the other motorbike belonged to him or to the critically maimed, Maqsood, who was riding it.
Maqsood was being operated upon at the JPMC where he was not in a position to speak, he said.
The other maimed person was identified as Mohammed Khan, a fruit vendor, who was discharged from hospital after being given first aid. He told the police that he was selling fruit to car riders when he heard the kaboom.
Blast site
The area was cordoned off following the blast. There was a crowd of onlookers besides ambulances and media crew at the scene. With the impact of the blast, windows of the Parking Plaza across the road were broken.
Blood-stained mangoes were spread over the road outside Jamia Masjid Muhajir Makki (named after Haji Imdadmullah Muhajir Makki) and Madressah Mahd-ul-Irshad Islami (named after Maulana Irshad Ahmed Shaheed) after the blast.
"Look at all the pieces of flesh scattered all over the place. We found a human skull stuck to the wall there," said a Chhipa volunteer, Abdul Hameed.
"This can only happen to the one carrying the bomb," he said.
Besides the two motorbikes, a dark green Cultus showered in blood was parked near the blast site.
The car belonged to two brothers, Mohammad Saad and Adnan, who weren't sure what they should do about it. "I'm manager at a Meezan Bank branch nearby. My brother and I only stopped for a few minutes here to buy some fruit for Iftar when the blast occurred. We just got down. Now we have gathered some courage to come forward and ask the officers here if we can take our car," said Mr Saad, while speaking to Dawn.
His brother, Adnan, said that they were also hesitant to come forward as they wondered if they would be included in the suspects somehow.
Mohammad Asif, a resident of Lines Area, said he rushed to the location on hearing the blast. "Everyone was running helter-skelter. These surveillance cameras if they are working must have recorded the entire thing," he said.
Outside the mortuary
Mohammad Azeem, a KKF ambulance driver outside the mortuary of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, said that the bodies were in pieces and beyond recognition. "There is a fruit vendor whose remains they have been put together to identify him and there is the fellow with whose motorbike perhaps the bomber collided. His torso and legs are here with cycle of violence parts stuck in the flesh. The other parts of his body were in the cop shoppe."
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2014
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#1
Our priest shakes hands, greets parishioners, and offers coffee and donuts after Mass. They blow everyone up outside the Mosque. Every religion has its traditions, I guess. Who am I to judge?
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/06/2014 7:32
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[IsraelTimes] Egypt's prime minister on Saturday defended a steep rise in fuel prices as a necessary move to shore up the treasury, as outraged commuters bickered with public transport drivers over fare hikes and some rushed to gas stations over fears of shortages.
The price increases of up to 80 percent came into force early on Saturday in a swift announcement made just hours earlier, following promises to cut subsidies that eat up nearly a quarter of the state budget. They also come after an increase in electricity prices that were put in effect at the start of July.
Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab, addressing a televised news conference, said energy subsidies have over the past decade cost the treasury a staggering 687 billion pounds (nearly $100 billion) that could have been used to bolster essential services.
He said it would be a "crime" if his government did not move to start lifting subsidies. He argued that 26.3 percent of Egypt's estimated 86 million people live in poverty and that overall unemployment stands at 13.6 percent, reaching above 50 percent for Egyptians aged between 20 and 30.
"There will have to be political, social and economic reforms," vowed Mahlab. "Debts are mounting and the question we must ask ourselves is whether we want to leave this legacy for future generations."
Mahlab said the partial lifting of energy subsidies would free 51 billion pounds (about $7 billion) to be spent on education, health care, pensions and raising wages.
Newly elected President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has said he would need to tackle the tough issue of subsidies and asked every Egyptian to be ready to sacrifice to help the country's battered economy after three years of turmoil.
The former military chief also asked the government to amend the largest budget in Egypt's history — at $115 billion — to reduce its deficit from 12 to 10 percent.
The fuel price rise was highest for 80 octane gasoline, used mostly by old vehicles that still fill Egyptian streets, with the price jumping 78 percent to 22 cents per liter. Diesel fuel, used by most of Egypt's public transport and trucks, increased 64 percent to 25 cents a liter. Gasoline that is 92 octane increased by 40 percent to 37 cents a liter.
Successive Egyptian leaders have balked at reducing energy subsidies, fearing unrest.
In some areas, the decision spurred a rush on gas stations, with long lines forming and many motorists frustrated.
Some drivers of Egypt's popular microbuses had raised their fares before the government announced exact increases. Mahlab warned that authorities would intervene to make sure fare increases are limited to around 10 percent. Taxi meters will also be changed to allow for higher fares, he added.
In the Canal city of Suez, microbus and taxi drivers refused to take on passengers until the government announces a detailed new fare structure. Some employees had to walk to work. Drivers have forced other public transportation vehicles to stop working until the fares are increased.
On line Saturday at one Cairo gas station, taxi driver and father of five Ebeid Ibrahim directed his frustration at the president. "When el-Sissi came to office he said he did not have a magical wand to make people's lives better. We do not want anything form anybody, but at least the status quo should have been left as it is. Where am I supposed to get money from?" said the 56-year-old Ibrahim.
Near him, Abdullah Ibrahim, 36 and father of three, stood in line to fill up his microbus, decrying the sharp rise.
"We will raise the prices on the passengers who are in need just like us," he said. "If they ask us to bear extreme measures, they have to be reasonable, the rise will specifically affect the poor."
[MIRROR.CO.UK] Evil terror boss Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi came out of the shadows for the first time today — in a dramatic video in which he glorifies the slaughter of innocent people.
The warlord whose jihadi militants are behind hundreds of brutal killings in Syria and Iraq delivered a chilling sermon to fanatics.
His 15-minute rant was filmed at the grand mosque in the captured city of Mosul, northern Iraq.
Surrounded by henchmen and rows of Kalashnikovs, al-Baghdadi's eyes appeared lifeless.
But his words were laced with hatred as he called on all Muslims to rise up and kill those who oppose him.
"Allah likes us to kill his enemies and make jihad," he bellowed.
It was the first time the notoriously secretive and elusive leader of ISIS, now seen as more powerful and feared even than al-Qaeda chiefs, had shown his face to the world publicly.
It is believed the video was released to rebuff reports that al-Baghdadi had been injured or killed in an airstrike.
And it shows that ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), which has proclaimed a caliphate called Islamic State, is becoming more confident as it attempts to steamroller through Iraq and the Middle East.
The bloodthirsty rampage is being funded by 256million plundered from Mosul Central Bank.
Al-Baghdadi's cocksure public appearance in Iraq's second city contrasts with former al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, who hid his location when recording messages.
Wearing a black turban and robe, al-Baghdadi — who claims to be descended from the Prophet Mohammed — is filmed slowly climbing stairs to a balcony, above which flies the black flag of the Islamic State.
Text on the video calls him: "Caliph Ibrahim, Emir of the faithful in the Islamic State."
Al-Baghdadi used a a small twig to clean his teeth before launching into his speech — made during the first Friday prayers of Ramadan.
He urged the world's Muslims to join the cause. Under his direction, the Islamic world would be returned to "dignity, might, rights and leadership", the self-anointed "Caliph Ibrahim" announced.
Praising Sunni jihadists who have slaughtered thousands of rival Shia Muslims, beheading some, he called for the fight to continue and went on: "God has granted your brothers the Mujahideen victory and conquest after years of patience.
"The establishment of a caliphate is an obligation. The religion cannot be in place unless the sharia (law) is established. I am your leader, though I am not the best of you, so if you see that I am right, support me, and if you see that I am wrong, advise me."
The video was released on a website known to be used by ISIS. Sources in Baghdad said it was genuine.
It spread rapidly across jihadi websites after it was posted online. Many militants took to social media to praise al-Baghdadi's message and issue further threats. One, Abu Bakr al-Janab, wrote: "He gave the most honest speech and promises."
Experts believe ISIS has surpassed al-Qaeda as the world's most dangerous Islamic group and its success has proved attractive to foreign jihadists, including many from Britain.
As many as 500 Britons may have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join the ranks of ISIS. The Government fears many will return to the UK after being trained in terror.
The group's takeover of Mosul last month sent shockwaves through the international community.
And it instantly made ISIS the world's richest terror group.
Al-Baghdadi is not believed to have appeared on video before and there are just two known photographs, one dating from his time in a US detention camp in Iraq from 2005 to 2009.
On his release into Iraqi custody, he reportedly told US officials: "I'll see you in New York."
Other Sunni Muslim leaders dismissed al-Baghdadi's declaration of a caliphate and accused him of violating Islamic law.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2014
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I still remember those videos OBL would release in which he would sit and smirk as he preached all kinds of horror and mayhem for the West...
Yep, he is claiming to be a descendent to give himself a claim of leadership. I wonder if he used the same lawyer the ONE used?
Of course, that is the problem with Islam, no central authority. You have all of these tin hat nutjobs and fanatics out there spouting all kinds of nonsense and no central religious authority to step in and provide adult leadership. My problem with Islam is the fact that some illiterate goat herder can put on a robe and a turban and start preaching, without any knowledge, and advocate outrageous practices and people will follow him...
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
07/06/2014 11:22
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#4
Like Big Mo. And this guy, named after Mo's boyfriend and the caliph's capital, stage name or not seems interested in living up to its meaning.
IMHO these groups who revel the butcher show up in history more often than we would like to believe and that access to technology has given those interested in civilization a better field against those who are born and raised to kill or enslave others, the animal man. Sort of a Greeks vs. Centaurs if you will.
#5
"I am your Leader ... Support me ... Advise me" . Can't damn him for his honesty to his followers.
Sorry to say it, but widin ths cope of his statement, Al-Baghdadi is actually being more closer to Jesus andor John Wayne, etc. than far too many Non-Muslim contemporary politicians.
[DAWN] GILGIT: Over three dozen suspected turbans wearing Mighty Pak Army uniform stormed a cop shoppe in Diamer district on Friday morning, tied the coppers with ropes and took away weapons, uniform, wireless sets, and other valuables from the cops.
The Dodishal cop shoppe is situated a kilometer from the Karakuram Highway at the border of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... and Gilgit-Baltistan regions.
Police sources told Dawn that 36 to 40 unidentified gunnies wearing army uniform stormed the cop shoppe at about 1:30am on Friday. The sources said that only six police personnel were present at duty when the cop shoppe was attacked, adding that the assailants tied the personnel with ropes and thrashed some over resistance.
The attackers took away 10 guns, three pistols, thousands of rounds, wireless telephone sets, police uniforms and other belongings of the police personnel.
The sources said that the attackers were speaking Urdu, Pashto and Shina languages and also accused the coppers of being the puppets of America. They said that other cop shoppes of Diamer district were informed after three hours of the incident.
GB home secretary, Attaul Rahman, told Dawn that additional police force had been sent to Diamer district from Gilgit for catching the culprits and investigating the incident.
He said that Inspector General of Police, Saleem Bathi, was leading a search operation in Diamer district and adjoining areas to nab the outlaws.
Dawn tried to contact the police officials at the scene, but to no avail as the area is remote and has no communication facilities.
The region's home secretary informed that GB had requested the KP government and the security forces to help arrest the terrorists. Security at the Karakuram Highway has also been enhanced to provide protection to the travelers, he said.
Mr Rehman said that all the information would be made public once the investigation into the case completed.
This is the fourth attack to have been carried out by turbans wearing Pakistain army uniform.
In February, 18 passengers belonging to Shia sect, who were travelling on KKH from Rawalpindi to Gilgit, were bumped off in Kohistan ...a backwoods district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa distinguished by being even more rustic than is the norm among the local Pashtuns.... district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
In a similar incident in August 2012, 19 Shia community members were bumped off at Lalusar near of Babusar Top while going to Rawalpindi from Gilgit. In June 2013, 10 foreign tourists, including one Pak guide, were killed at Nanga Parbat base camp in Diamer district.
The GB home secretary said that it seemed that the same group was involved in the latest incident.
A case against unknown attackers was registered at the Dodishal cop shoppe.
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Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Doesn't tell us much about, say, Boko Haram, or the militants coming out of European cities, sometimes third generation in those countries. Or why gays and Jews have such a hard time in, say, Amsterdam.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
07/06/2014 7:11
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#2
"Why militants now symbolise Muslims?"
Militant islam is so interwoven with political islam and religious islam that it is pointless to discuss one without the other. Jihad and Sharia Law, for example, do not separate out easily from religion. I choose to use lower case "i" for islam as a kind of non-recognition of this phony religion.
[DAWN] Five suspected hard boyz were killed and five Death Eater hideouts were destroyed early on Saturday as jet fighters pounded parts of the North Wazoo tribal region.
According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR),on facing fire and opposition from inside the Miranshah ... headquarters of al-Qaeda in Pakistain and likely location of Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Haqqani network has established a ministate centered on the town with courts, tax offices and lots of madrassas... town and Boya village, air strikes were launched to eliminate Death Eaters.
Five Death Eater hideouts, caves and a huge cache of arms and ammunition were also destroyed and scores of hard boyz were killed in early morning air strikes.
Most of the hard boyz killed in the strikes were reportedly Uzbeks.
Meanwhile, ...back at the barn, Bossy's udder had begun to ache... a security personnel was killed and two others injured in an kaboom near the Spinwam security check post.
According to military sources, more troops have been deployed in the area to enhance the security after the kaboom.
One soldier was also killed when an improvised bomb (IED) went kaboom! during a clearance operation in the morning.
Earlier today, sources had said that suspected Death Eater hideouts in Daigan, Poikhel and Muhammadkhel areas were targeted and destroyed during Arclight airstrikes.
So far more than 400 suspected Death Eaters, mostly foreigners, have been killed during the operation while at least 19 IED-making factories have also been unearthed by security forces in parts of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan.
Insiders said most of the houses in Miranshah contained IEDs and most of the roads in the area were planted with explosives and landmines.
A high level officer privy to the developments in the military operation claimed that imported muscle of all origins had made the locals hostage.
The officer added that during search operations security forces recovered literature and flags of different international Death Eater organizations, including the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), the Uighurs etc.
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#1
NWA starring Eazy E disbanded in 1990 after his death from aids. We honor them as the father of gangster rap./sarc off
[Jpost] Four days after the alleged revenge killing of Palestinian teen Muhammad Abu Khdeir convulsed the nation, one of the six unidentified Jewish extremists arrested early Sunday morning in the brutal murder confessed to the crime.
According to numerous sources, the unidentified suspects made the confession during questioning by Shin Bet security agents. While details of the arrests and investigation remain largely unknown due to a court-sanctioned gag order, hours after their arrests a Petah Tikva court ruled that five of the suspects be held for an additional eight days.
According to Channel 2, one of the suspects is cooperated with police and has incriminated his accomplices.
Following the arrests, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch condemned the suspects.
"The State of Israel is a country that abides by, and enforces the law, and will continue to take determined action against all those who violate the law," the statement read. "I ask that everyone show responsibility and work to prevent further disturbances."
Aharonovitch continued: "This was a shocking and unacceptable act which any sane person, certainly in a strong and democratic country such as the State of Israel, must strongly condemn." Abu Khdeir's murder set off a chain of riots throughout east Jerusalem, with residents demanding vengeance against suspected Israeli killers.
The six suspects are suspected of affiliation with a terror organization, membership in an illegal movement, murder of a juvenile, criminal conspiracy, possession of weapons and ammunition and conducting a racially motivated crime.
The investigation revealed that the murder of the Paleostinian teen by the suspects was premeditated, and that they had arrived at Beit Hanina last Wednesday early in the morning and kidnapped and murdered Abu Khdeir.
The main piece of evidence is the vehicle used by the suspects for the kidnapping, which police located, and that was also captured by security cameras in the area.
[NEWS.YAHOO] Pope Francis has lamented the abandoning of the traditionally Christian practice of not working on Sundays, saying it has a negative impact on families and friendships.
Francis on Saturday traveled to Molise, an agricultural region in the heart of southern Italy where unemployment is chronically high. While he said poor people need jobs to have dignity, he indicated that opening stores and other businesses on Sundays as a way to create jobs wasn't beneficial for society.
Francis said the priority should be "not economic but human," and that the stress should be on families and friendships, not commercial relationships. He added: "Maybe it's time to ask ourselves if working on Sundays is true freedom."
He said that spending Sundays with family and friends is an "ethical choice" for faithful and non-faithful alike.
Posted by: Fred ||
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That was standard fare, when I grew up in KC in the 50's. Remember the 'Blue Laws" anyone?
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/06/2014 8:01
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#3
The admonition is one day of rest. It never said 'Sunday'. The principle is a cultural ritual that recognizes as a whole one particular day. Some groups its Friday, others sunset Friday to sunset Saturday, and others its Sunday. I suspect what the Pope is advocating is what others may term, getting the family to sit down for dinner, except instead of a nuclear family, he's talking community.
#4
Blue Laws were killed by modern medical science that developed drugs that were determined to be life saving. Exemptions appeared for drug stores for Sunday access. Then it became milk and food for the baby. Then it became the classical camel, nose, tent event with drug stores becoming general stores. Then the pressure from other businessmen resenting the competition getting an extra day of customers which fueled the 'separation of church and state' argument. All of which leads us to the situation today.
[ARABNEWS] A jacket wallah targeting worshippers at a mosque in a remote village in northeast Nigeria ... a particularly crimson stretch of Islam's bloody border... killed five people and maimed dozens, a security source said on Saturday, in an area where Lions of Islam are mounting attacks almost daily. The source, who declined to be named, said Mohammedans in the village of Konduga were observing Friday prayers when the pick-up truck approached. A local vigilante group stopped the truck to inspect it and the bomber then detonated the bomb a few meters away from the mosque, he said. Witness Mohammadu Sheriff said he had seen the vigilantes conducting checks on a pick-up van carrying firewood.
"Suddenly it went kaboom!," he told Rooters on phone. "It would have been more devastating if the bomber had succeeded in driving near the mosque, which had over a thousand people in it."
The Death Eater group 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... has killed many thousands since launching an uprising in 2009, and several hundred in the past two months, as it has stepped up a campaign against civilians in the northeast. The kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls by Boko Haram from the village of Chibok in April made world headlines. Despite pledges of Western support and promises by President Goodluck Jonathan ... 14th President of Nigeria. He was Governor of Bayelsa State from 9 December 2005 to 28 May 2007, and was sworn in as Vice President on 29 May 2007. Jonathan is a member of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP). He is a lover of nifty hats, which makes him easily recognizable unless someone else in the room is wearing a neat chapeau... to free them, they remain in captivity.
A spate of bombings across the north and center of Nigeria in the past three months has also demonstrated the rebels' ability to strike outside of their northeastern stronghold.
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[DAWN] A meeting of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... with Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan ...Currently the Interior Minister of Pakistain. He is the senior leader of the Pak Moslem League (N) and a close aide to Nawaz Uncle Fester Sharif. He is noted for his vocal anti-American railing in the National Assembly. However (comma) Khan told the U.S. ambassador that he was in fact pro-American but he and the PML-N would have to be critical of US actions in order to remain publicly credible. Khan cited his wife and children's US citizenship as proof, which means he's lying to one side or the other and probably both. He wears a wig, but you probably guessed that. since hair doesn't grow naturally in that shape or texture... is under way in Lahore on Saturday, DawnNews reported.
The meeting, which is being held at the premier's Raiwind residence, was also attended by Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif ...Pak dynastic politician, brother of PM Nawaz Sharif, chief minister of Punjab... .
Speaking to Nisar, the premier alluded to the interior minister's reservations and said that the latter gets easily upset. To this, the minister responded by saying "we are only upset with those close to us".
Sources privy to the details emerging from the meeting said Nisar complained that the prime minister had not taken him into confidence over crucial decisions. Upon this, the premier said that the minister should let go of his grievances and return to work.
The conversation took a lighter tone when both exchanged smiles over the prime minister's reference to his telephone calls that Nisar had apparently not been taking.
During the meeting, the country's political situation as well as matters of mutual interest were discussed.
Shahbaz had brought the interior minister to Lahore today for a meeting with the premier.
PM Nawaz had chaired a meeting of the Pakistain Mohammedan League-Nawaz (PML-N) leadership yesterday which was skipped by Nisar over some misunderstandings.
Reports of a rift in the PML-N have been circulating in the media according to which differences have developed between the party leadership and Nisar.
Party sources claimed that besides being unhappy over the government's handling of the case of Pervez Perv Musharraf ... former dictator of Pakistain, who was less dictatorial and corrupt than any Pak civilian government to date ... , the minister was also jittery over non-allocation of funds for the internal security policy in the federal budget.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2014
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Officials say militants have targeted a border post between Yemen and Saudi Arabia in an attack that left two soldiers and three of the gunmen dead.
Better work on that fence, Mahmoud...
Yemen's official news agency says a suicide car bomber struck the Yemeni side of the border post in the Al Wadia area on Friday, killing one Yemeni soldier and wounding another. Saba says other gunmen then fled in two cars toward Saudi Arabia after border guards opened fire.
Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour Al Turki says that Saudi guards exchanged fire with gunmen in the same area, killing three of them and arresting another. He says a Saudi border guard commander was killed.
Saba linked the attack to Al Qaida, but weapons smugglers and human traffickers also are active in the area.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/06/2014
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[IsraelTimes] The Ashdod municipality said on Saturday night that no classes or other planned activities would be allowed in the city outside of specially-fortified buildings able to withstand the continuing barrage of rocket fire from Gazoo.
In nearby Ashkelon, the local school system's parents' organization called on the city to cancel summer camps and other children's activities slated to take place in public spaces, according to Army Radio.
The growing concern over the safety of residents in Israeli towns near Gazoo is likely to be the main topic of discussion at Sunday's cabinet meeting.
The IDF has deployed multiple Iron Dome anti-rocket defense batteries to southern towns in recent weeks as tensions rose between Israel and Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, over the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens in the West Bank on June 12.
Several rockets were shot down in recent days, including over Beersheba, the largest city in the Negev.
Meanwhile, ...back at the Hubba Hubba Club, Nunzio wondered: Where the hell was Chumbaloni? And where was his $600?... Hamas upped its rhetoric on Saturday evening, declaring that its rockets and missiles could reach "all" of Israel's cities. The statement came several hours after the group targeted the city of Beersheba with rocket fire and as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu considered a tougher response to the continued attacks.
Netanyahu faces pressure from other members of his cabinet, who have called in recent days for a tougher response to the rocket fire.
"Restraint in the face of attacks on women and kiddies is not strength," Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, one of Netanyahu's top coalition partners, chastised on Saturday evening. "Restraint in the face of the execution of three children is weakness," he said, referencing the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens in the West Bank on June 12, carried out by a Hamas cell in Hebron.
"The residents of the south are not second grade citizens, and we must respond to the rocket fire on Beersheba just as we would respond to an attack on Tel Aviv, and not wait for an attack on Tel Aviv," he said.
#1
Line up every piece of artillery Israel has, echelon left, as close together as they can be and still be used. Start firing. Continue firing. In a week or so, ease up to see if you've hit anything important. If not, keep firing. In a month or so, the "Hamas" problem will be solved.
An ARCLIGHT would be quicker, but Israel doesn't have an large bombers, and I doubt SAC will lend them any.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/06/2014 18:12
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[DAWN] ONCE again, bad boy organizations are filling a vacuum created by the government's torpor and lack of planning. This has been seen before in times of crisis, including natural disasters such as the earthquake in 2005, the floods in recent years, as well as the military operation in Swat ...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat... in 2009, when internally displaced people were given succour by 'charities' run by bad boy organizations. This time it is the IDP crisis unfolding in the wake of the military operation in North Wazoo that has once again seen such groups leap into the fray. A report in Dawn on Friday detailed a visit to relief camps run by the Falah-e-Insaniyat ...the current false nose and mustache of Jamaat ud-Dawa, which was the false nose and mustache of Lashkar e-Taiba... Foundation — the Jamaat-ud-Dawa ...the front organization of Lashkar-e-Taiba... 's latest iteration — and supporters of Maulana Masood Azhar ...One of the major players in Pak terrorism. In early 1994, India incarcerated him for his terrorist activities. In 1995, foreign tourists were kidnapped in Jammu and Kashmir. The kidnappers included the release of Masood Azhar among their demands. One of the hostages managed to escape but the rest were eventually killed. In 1999, he was freed by the Indian government in exchange for passengers on hijacked Indian Airlines Flight 814 that had been diverted to Kandahar. The hijackers were led by Masood Azhar's brother, Ibrahim Athar. Once he was handed over to the hijackers, they fled to Pak territory despite the fact that Islamabad had earlier stated that any of the hijackers would be tossed in the clink at the border. The Pak government also previously indicated that Azhar would be allowed to return home since he did not face any charges there. Shortly after his release, he made a public address to an estimated 10,000 people in Karachi, firing up the rubes against America and India... , the firebrand ...firebrands are noted more for audio volume and the quantity of spittle generated than for any actual logic in their arguments... holy man who heads Jaish-e-Mohammad ...literally Army of Mohammad, a Pak-based Deobandi terror group founded by Maulana Masood Azhar in 2000, after he split with the Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin. In 2002 the government of Pervez Musharraf banned the group, which changed its name to Khaddam ul-Islam and continued doing what it had been doing before without missing a beat... , which is banned both internationally and in Pakistain. The report quoted the FIF camp's chief organiser lauding the army's "cooperative" attitude towards them. At the same time, local NGOs are being asked to apply for no-objection certificates to set up relief camps.
The bad boy threat to Pakistain is a deep-rooted one precisely because groups espousing dangerously obscurantist ideologies have been allowed to weave themselves into the warp and weft of society. They have been encouraged to fly the banner of patriotism while those with a secular approach have been marginalised and regarded with suspicion by the powers that be. The disastrous fallout from this attempt at social engineering is one reason the military finds itself fighting a battle in the mountains of North Waziristan today. However, if you can't say something nice about a person some juicy gossip will go well... to effect long-term reversal of Pakistain's slide into radicalisation, every strain of extremism will have to be painstakingly excised from the body politic. Moreover, until the establishment severs its ties with 'favoured' holy warriors, the country cannot truly change its trajectory. In times such as these, such groups must be denied the space to act as saviours of vulnerable people in terms of material assistance, while along the way making inroads into their minds in the guise of saving their souls.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2014
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[Ynet] This is probably the worst timing to talk about interests shared by Israel and Hamas. The heart says 'never,' but what does the mind say?
On the eve of the discovery of the three kidnapped teens' bodies, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented his political and security-related doctrine to the citizens of Israel and the world. No more moves of response tailored for the needs of the hour, but an organized doctrine pointing to an intention to implement a consistent policy, step by step.
His premise is that Israel will carry on its own the security responsibility for the entire area of the Land of Israel, as this is the only way to guarantee its citizens' safety. This situation will continue without an expiration date — and even if some day ways will be found to provide the Palestinians with a sort of state within these or other borders, it will be an entity lacking many characteristics of political independence.
The regional developments, according to Netanyahu, require the erection of an efficient and reliable security fence along the Jordan River, both in order to combat dangers from the east and northeast and in order to effectively control the movement of the Palestinian residents living between the western security fence and the new eastern one.
The premise indicated in his speech is that the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria will get accustomed to this situation, whether due to lack of choice or because of simultaneous efforts to provide them with improved living conditions, a thriving economy and a certain degree of self rule, subject to Israel's security needs.
Israel, according to Netanyahu, will continue its uncompromising battle against the terror led by Hamas and will claim prices which may be greater and harder, as long as it takes. At the same time, it will develop an initiated regional policy and team up with countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, and will especially be loyal to Jordan.
In this framework, Netanyahu devoted a specific, unequivocal statement to Kurdistan, which is still a district in northern Iraq, and publicly declared his support for its political independence.
But there is no certainty whatsoever that this policy can be implemented. The Palestinian public in Judea and Samaria is starting to wake up, and the clashes developing between Jews and Arabs are multiplying and intensifying. Mahmoud Abbas' control of his people is growing weaker, both because of his own failures and because in the past few months Israel has been operating against him both publicly and in other ways to force him to take the road we are outlining.
In this state of affairs, individuals and groups may initiate acts of revenge, some of which will be thwarted while the others will inflame the situation even more.
As it is clear that the Palestinian side will not be able to receive the suggested outline, Abbas will be forced to fight it or get out of the arena. The Palestinian Authority's collapse will be an inevitable outcome.
On the regional level, the Kurdish move is filled with problems. Netanyahu made his comments shortly after US Secretary of State met with Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdish district in northern Iraq, and begged him not to push for the region's independence. Netanyahu's declaration pushes Israel one step further away from its American friend and joins other moves of estrangement from its ally.
The Israeli move likely aims to encourage the establishment of a Kurdish state in territories where significant Kurdish publics live. We are talking about a future annexation of lands from northern Iran, Turkey and Syria to the new state. There is no idea which is further away even from Russia's policy on this issue.
In case of a strong regional opposition to the establishment of a Kurdish state, I doubt that Israel, with all its abilities, will be able to carry the responsibility for the move on its shoulders. Let us just mention that during the Yom Kippur War, Israel had hoped that the Kurds would open a front against the Arabs in northern Iraq, but that hope was shattered.
Netanyahu also spoke about the radical Islamic forces — ISIS — which are moving fast towards Baghdad. He likely wrapped them in the same bundle with Hamas, but that's not the case. Hamas is the most bitter and efficient rival of ISIS.
Khaled Mashaal declared Wednesday that Hamas was interested in maintaining its agreements with Israel which ended the two recent rounds — Operations Cast Lead and Pillar of Defense. Hamas in Gaza is preferable to ISIS in Gaza.
This is probably the worst timing to talk about the interests shared by Israel and Hamas, as we mourn the teens killed in a despicable murder. The heart says "never," but what does the mind say?
Donetsk, occupied Ukraine -- Resurgent government forces on Saturday hoisted the Ukrainian flag over pro-Russian rebels' main stronghold after a devastating shelling onslaught that levelled much of the city but delivered Kiev its biggest success of the campaign.
Looks like the new president of Ukraine has found some political wiggle-room to go after the separatists. And that the Ukraine military has found some footing for itself. This is impressive for them. Donetsk, the heart of the separatist movement, might be in line to fall next if there is no ceasefire, a ceasefire that the separatists are now demanding loudly.
The self-proclaimed mayor of Slavyansk confirmed to AFP that insurgents had abandoned the rustbelt city of 120,000. A local resident said by phone that barricades once manned by the camouflage-clad gunmen stood abandoned since the early morning.
Ukraine's ability to win back Slavyansk -- home to one of the country's biggest weapons storage facilities that fell to the insurgents on April 6 -- marks a key turning point in three months of low-scale warfare that has threatened the very survival of the ex-Soviet state.
Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said in a Facebook post that the withdrawal was led by senior militia commander Igor Strelkov -- alleged by Kiev to be a colonel in Russia's GRU military intelligence unit.
Both Strelkov and Moscow deny any GRU link despite Western claims that the Kremlin is covertly funding and arming the uprising to destabilise Kiev's new pro-European leaders and retain control over Russian-speaking eastern regions of Ukraine.
Ukrainian Defence Minister Valeriy Geletey told President Petro Poroshenko that his forces had raised the national flag over city hall "in accordance with your order to liberate Slavyansk".
"The departure of the fighters was a surprise. Nobody was aware it was happening," city resident Kolya Cherep told AFP by telephone. "This morning, I saw that there were no fighters in front of the town hall. Then I saw that there were none manning the barricades in town."
Strelkov himself had told the pro-Kremlin LifeNews channel on Friday that his units "will be destroyed... within a week, two weeks at the latest" unless Russia helped secure an immediate truce or moved in its troops. The militia commander tweeted on Saturday that President Vladimir Putin's repeated vow to use "all "available means" to protect his compatriots in Ukraine -- a neighbour he referred to as "New Russia" -- now looked like an empty promise.
"They filled us with hope and abandoned us. Those were fine words by Putin about protecting the Russian people, defending New Russia. But only words," Strelkov wrote.
Slavyansk is the symbolic heart of an uprising sparked by the February ouster of a pro-Kremlin administration in Kiev and fuelled by Russia's subsequent seizure of Crimea.
Clashes in the economically-vital border regions of Lugansk and Donetsk picked up with renewed vigour when Poroshenko tore up a 10-day ceasefire agreement earlier this week. His decision was immediately followed by the launch of a "massive" offensive by Kiev that prompted Germany and France to spearhead a new push for an immediate and lasting ceasefire.
US President Barack Obama has also urged Putin to commitment himself to a solution in Ukraine that could stave off punishing American sanctions against Russia's banking and arms exports sectors. And uneasy EU leaders are hoping that a firm promise by the Putin not to meddle in Ukraine can take pressure off the 28-nation bloc to adopt punitive steps that could damage their own strong energy and financial ties with Russia.
But Poroshenko's call for European-mediated truce talks on Saturday was left unanswered by Moscow and the separatist command.
"The date, place and format are being discussed, but there have been no major changes yet in the progress of preparations for consultations," a source Moscow told Russia's Interfax news agency.
The 43-year-old Strelkov remains one of the uprising's most mysterious but also powerful figures who effectively headed the new Kiev leadership's most-wanted list. He holds the title of "defence minister" of the Donetsk People's Republic and is also the chief of the Slavyansk militia.
Strelkov was linked to the April capture and detention of seven OSCE monitors in Slavyansk who were eventually released after an eight-day ordeal following intervention from Moscow. Kiev has published what it says are intercepted conversations between him and Putin's special envoy Vladimir Lukin talking about the OSCE monitors.
"We want to liberate Ukraine from the fascists," Strelkov told a Russian tabloid after his units had captured Slavyansk.
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[Ynet] Depraved exploitation and abuse of children as targets and weapons will not end so long as UN, members of international community and NGOs continue to enable these atrocities.
The Israeli public is in collective agony and mourning over the abduction and murder of teenagers Gil-Ad Shaer, Naftali Frenkel and Eyal Yifrah.
In contrast, the Palestinian public has widely celebrated the crime, adopting a three-fingered salute honoring the "heroic" perpetrators, mocking grieving family members on social media, and passing out candy.
Condemnations by Palestinian Authority officials were rare. As appalling as these responses are, they are emblematic of the Palestinian war strategy of which the targeting and exploitation of children is an integral part.
The Palestinian tactic of targeting children is not new, but there are unfortunately plenty of recent examples: In 2011, Hamas launched a heat seeking missile at an Israeli school bus, killing a 16-year old boy. In 2010, Palestinian terrorists associated with the PFLP murdered five members of the Fogel family, including stabbing to death two small children and decapitating a three-month old baby. In 2008, a Palestinian gunman walked into a Jerusalem school and open fired on children studying in the library, murdering eight. In 2004, Gazan terrorists affiliated with Islamic Jihad shot at point blank range and killed Tali Hatuel, eight-months pregnant, along with her four young daughters aged two to 10.
Palestinian terrorists have long made a point of detonating suicide bombers in pizza shops, buses, weddings, bar mitzvah celebrations and malls to inflict the most casualties as possible on the defenseless. Like the reaction to the June kidnappings, outrage from the Palestinian community for these atrocities was rare, if expressed at all.
The Palestinian assault on children, however, does not end with Israelis. The exploitation of Palestinian children as weapons of war begins from birth. Pictures abound of Palestinian babies dressed as suicide bombers and brandishing arms.
Children's TV programs, many sponsored by the Palestinian Authority itself, preach jihad, advocate genocide against Jews and infidels, and glorify martyrdom. A young girl on a program recently aired on Hamas TV was encouraged by the host to be in the police when she grew up so that she could "shoot Jews ⦠all of them."
After years of being educated with incitement, Palestinian pre-teens are then pressed into service by "popular committees" to engage in riots and violent confrontations with Israeli soldiers. Older kids are sent to hurl firebombs and slingshot projectiles. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah's Martyrs Brigades enlist teens to be suicide bombers and to commit other atrocities on Israeli civilians. Even rock-throwing, which has often been deadly, puts Palestinian minors at risk for arrest and jail time.
UN looks the other way
In addition to turning them into combatants, Palestinians deliberately place children at risk from Israeli counter-terror measures by co-locating weapons and terror infrastructure inside schools, hospitals and mosques. Terrorists adorn civilian dress and launch rockets and other weapons from within civilian areas to maximize loss during retaliatory attacks, which will increase the propaganda effect.
Many children have been killed by these strategies, including, last week, when a three-year old girl was killed by a misfired Palestinian rocket that was aimed at Israeli population centers.
The most shocking aspect of this deliberate disregard for children's lives, however, is the blind eye turned to it by the UN, the EU, and so-called human rights organizations.
The perpetual dictator's club that is the UN, and officials there, look the other way, and even in some cases praise these abuses as "resistance."
Support from the EU and European governments funds TV programs and other media that perpetuate terrorist indoctrination and incitement. The EU also partners, through NGO projects, with the Palestinian Struggle Coordinating Committee, responsible for organizing protests that frequently turn violent.
According to media reports, European largesse has also been used by the PA to pay salaries to convicted terrorists serving their sentences in prison.
NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issue obscenely weak condemnations of these violations against children, generally burying them in lengthy publications accusing Israel of war crimes. Calls for accountability or an end to impunity for terror perpetrators are rarely made. Measures such as universal jurisdiction lawsuits and boycott campaigns (the NGOs' weapons of choice against Israel) are never wielded against Palestinians.
Such complicity only emboldens future acts and represents the total inversion of morality, human rights and law.
The depraved exploitation and abuse of children as targets and weapons by Palestinians must end. Yet, they will not end these abominable tactics so long as the UN, members of the international community, and NGOs continue to enable these atrocities.
#2
Look for Palestinian children to be shipped to the U.S. and dumped at some Federal relocation center in your neighborhood. Probably, they are already being shipped and coming up to the U.S. via Mexico.
We have our very own Chicago boyz at Rantburg, so their take on this issue should be instructive.
The fireworks won't officially fly until tonight, but yesterday's decision in a key Illinois Supreme Court case has set off a first-class explosion in state and local government, potentially punching tens of billions of dollars in holes in their collective budgets.
Some elements of the court's decision are drawing intense debate. But if the overnight consensus is anywhere near correct, everyone from City Hall and the Capitol to your local village and school board will have little option now but to dig deep, cut services and raise taxes a lot — and labor unions little incentive to compromise.
"The law in Illinois is now crystal clear: Politicians cannot break the promises made to Chicago teachers and other city employees," crowed the Chicago Teachers Union in a statement. "Recently passed laws to cut promised retirement benefits are clearly unconstitutional."
This comes from our 1970 state constitution rewrite which guarantees that state pensions can never be reduced. Back in 1970 the labor unions were powerful enough to have a seat (via their pet Democrats) in the constitutional convention and they made sure this provision found its way in. They then spent the next 40 years boosting politicians (mostly but not always Democrats) who would in turn sweeten state pensions and retiree health care. We now have a pension system that is simply unaffordable, and if anyone says "cut the payments" the unions can go to court. The courts in turn point to the constitution, and the pension cuts go away. The union solution is, of course, to raise taxes as high as necessary -- a bit higher than that would be nice because the "excess" then could be used to sweeten the pensions some more.
As Ace of Spades would say, we're truly boned, perhaps even worse than California.
Cash-strapped government budget makers "cannot write (the Illinois Constitution) to include restrictions and limitations that the drafters did not express and the citizens of Illinois did not approve," said a more restrained but equally decisive Illinois Senate President John Cullerton.
The court ruled that retiree health insurance benefits for state workers mandated by the Legislature deserve the same level of protection as pensions, which according to the constitution "cannot be diminished or impaired."
#1
If you cannot cut the pensions then the only logical choice is to cut the pensioners. Just kidding. Raise taxes, file bankruptcy and wait for a federal bailout.
Posted by: Matt ||
07/06/2014 9:58
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#3
Yeah, I've been thinking about Plan B myself. I wonder how long it will be before Californicate realizes they are about to implode on the state union pension funds.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
07/06/2014 11:29
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#4
Issue well described, Dr. Steve.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
07/06/2014 15:42
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[IsraelTimes] The Paleostinian reconciliation deal between Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, and Fatah looks as though it is about to evaporate into thin air in the West Bank and Gazoo.
Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV reported Friday night that Hamas ministers will return to work as sole rulers of the Gazoo Strip by the 15th of Ramadan (July 13) if the Paleostinian Authority doesn't pay the salaries of roughly 40,000 Hamas government clerks. Those same 40,000 Paleostinians have been the focus of discord between Fatah and Hamas since the formation of the national unity government in April.
Hamas has demanded that the the government pay its workers, while Paleostinian Authority President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... and his associates claimed that the reconciliation agreement had dictated that a special committee would decide which employees would continue to work for the PA government and receive salaries from it. Those decisions have yet to be made.
Qatar has already expressed willingness to front the funds, but there is no way to do so — banks refuse to transfer the money to Hamas members' accounts because of international laws restricting aid to terrorist groups, and Egypt refuses to let Qatar transfer cash overland into the Gazoo Strip. Abbas, for his part, is not prepared to pay the salaries, and certainly not after the kidnapping and murders of three Israeli teens last month.
For the time being the rocket fire from Gazoo into Israel continues. It appears as if Hamas is conveying a message to the various small factions that they're allowed to launch, and that it doesn't intend to stop them.
Israeli experts claim time and again that Hamas is in a state of unprecedented weakness because of the IDF crackdown in the West Bank, and that perhaps this is what's caused it to resort to rocket fire at Israel.
The true story is likely a little different, and the blow the organization has suffered in the West Bank is not as mortal as the IDF describes. It would appear as if Hamas's weakness in Gazoo and the renewal of rocket fire by the Islamist group stem from the salary crisis and the failure of the reconciliation deal with Fatah. At present the organization does not possess the means to pay its people's salaries. Its greatest concern is that public frustration in Gazoo will ultimately be directed at its members. Perhaps, then, Hamas feels it's better to create tension with Israel (not a full-scale escalation) in a bid to increase pressure on Egypt to permit the transfer of funds or salaries to the Gazoo Strip.
On Friday evening, an anonymous senior Hamas official spoke to the Paleostinian Sawa news agency. He said that "those who expect Hamas to stop the rocket fire (against Israel), should turn to (Paleostinian Authority Prime Minister) Rami Hamdallah." He added that the situation in the Gazoo Strip was the consequence of not paying Hamas clerks' salaries.
[Jpost] The teens were taken because Israel itself, as a collective, has become a hostage to an illusory process that promotes only terror under the guise of seeking peace.
The tragic news reverberated throughout the country, as three kidnapped Israeli teens were found half-buried near Hebron, bound and shot to death by Hamas terrorists. Our hearts and minds are with the Shaer, Yifrah and Fraenkel families, as they struggle to cope with the unimaginable.
Many point to this outpouring of support as evidence of collective national will and strength; but the murder of Gil-Ad, Eyal and Naftali was, in fact, a by-product of weakness.
The teens were taken because Israel itself, as a collective, has become a hostage to an illusory process that promotes only terror under the guise of seeking peace. Through having succumbed to negotiating with terrorists, the Jewish state has legitimized terrorism against it.
The Oslo Accords were signed over 20 years ago with arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat, who spurned peace at Camp David in 2000 in favor of the second intifada, in which hundreds of innocent Israelis were killed and maimed.
Arafat's deputy and successor, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel's current "partner for peace," financed the 1972 Munich Massacre, denies the Holocaust and presides over a Fatah party whose charter openly calls for the Jewish state's destruction and whose armed wing — the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades — is in step with Hamas by claiming responsibility for the kidnapping.
The PLO, the controlling faction of the PA, atop which Abbas is perched, is equally committed to Israel's annihilation.
Essentially, then, the Palestinian government is an amalgamation of factions, each with their own terrorist militia, dedicated to eradicating Jewish sovereignty from the region.
That Israel ever agreed to engage on any level with such an entity — whether it incorporates Hamas or not — is an abomination. That it continues to do so after two decades of broken promises, outright lies and thousands of casualties is an affront to reason and to our many fallen.
The kidnapping is the result, not of the fog of war, but rather of our denial that we are, indeed, currently engaged in one. Israel continues to treat an implacable enemy — including the rabidly anti-Semitic Palestinian civilian population — as everything other than what it is, leaving our people to incur ongoing tragedies until such time that cold, hard reality sinks in: There is no Palestinian peace camp.
The three youths were abducted in what should be considered enemy territory. If they felt safe, it was a sentiment borne of a delusional process premised on the false conviction that Palestinians are committed to coexistence. There is a reason Israelis are barred from entering adjacent areas in the West Bank under Palestinian jurisdiction — because they risk death there.
The belief that the Palestinians' genocidal hatred can be contained, within any borders, is the byproduct of wishful thinking endemic to the peace process. More perverse is that this warped worldview whitewashes the second major factor accounting for the boys' kidnapping: Islam.
In an interview with Channel 10 after the teens were found dead, the mother of Amar Abu Eisha, one of the suspected kidnappers, affirmed that, "if he truly did it — I'll be proud of him till my final day. I raised my children on the knees of the religion... and their goal is to bring the victory of Islam."
It is unsurprising, then, that Abu Eisha found a home in Hamas, a jihadist organization — and not a Palestinian national movement, although it sometimes assumes this posture when beneficial — whose goal is the eradication of Israel in favor of the establishment of a Muslim caliphate.
For Hamas, the conflict with the Jewish state is not territorial, but rather spiritual. No amount of land swaps can solve such a conflict.
Only bombs and bullets can.
As Israeli-American political commentator Daniel Greenfield explains, "Hamas' charter begins with the Koran's praise for Muslims 'as the best people' and damns Christians and Jews to be 'smitten with abasement' for having 'incurred the wrath of Allah.' "There is nothing negotiable about [this expression of] supremacism.
Supremacism cannot be appeased. Supremacism does not want a piece of the pie. It wants the whole pie."
As Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the slew of Salafist terror groups that inhabit the Palestinian territories continue to advance this goal, Israel foolishly attempts to negotiate away the problem by propping up an equally adversarial PA; all the while keeping the Gazan crocodile — and public opinion — at bay with an airstrike here or there on a half-empty weapons depot.
It is futile policy that has no chance of stemming either the rising tide of Islamic fanaticism that has promoted the murder of Jews for over 1,000 years, or the PA's phased approach to destroying the country.
Overall, the latest tragedy is further proof that Israel is in desperate need of a paradigm shift.
Jerusalem must begin relating to the Palestinians for who they are: our sworn enemies. It must also abandon a tired and futile peace process, the ramifications of which increasingly threaten the safety of all Israelis.
Only then can a clear-eyed public debate be held as how best to proceed.
And there are other options (which I and numerous others have repeatedly advanced in these very pages).
But Israel can only move forward by first coming to terms with why it has lost three sons: the Jewish state is at war with a radicalized Palestinian people that has no interest in peace.
#1
No amount of land swaps can solve such a conflict.
Only bombs and bullets can.
The author is right about Israel. This will also be the case for the U.S. at some point too. In the U.S. in the meanwhile, kumbaya and the destruction of the U.S. goes on.
[HINDUSTANTIMES] Nearly 600 Indians will return to the country from conflict-hit Iraq over the next two days. Of them, 200 will return in an Iraqi Airways special chartered flight from Najaf to Delhi on Saturday, the external affairs ministry (MEA) said.
"The return of Indians from Iraq has gathered pace," MEA spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said, as 46 Indian nurses briefly held hostage by Sunni Arab militants arrived to an emotional welcome in Kochi.
"Tonight, 200 Indian nationals will return by Iraqi Airways special chartered flight from Najaf to Delhi. In addition, in the next 48 hours, approximately another 400 Indian nationals would be returning to various destinations in India, including Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad, through commercial flights."
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2014
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#2
Good for India. They went the extra mile to get their people out....
Earlier reports had various nations and groups in the ME being involved in the effort. That's good diplomacy....
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
07/06/2014 7:06
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#3
200 will return in an Iraqi Airways special chartered flight from Najaf to Delhi on Saturday
They printed everything needed to make this flight a target.
[Ynet] What makes a young Western man commit mass murder against other Muslims shortly after arriving in Syria or Iraq?
They are amiable young people. Occasionally, an argument breaks out between Barcelona and Messi fans and Madrid and Ronaldo fans. Occasionally, they update their Twitter account with amazing landscape pictures. Sometimes it's a cute kitten, alongside weapons.
One of them was supposed to start computer studies at university, the other is about to complete his medicine studies, others are unemployed. They are all young men who have joined the jihad in Syria and Iraq.
The exact numbers are unknown. In 2013, the European Union counter-terrorism coordinator estimated their number at 500. According to a study by Richard Brent, in June 2014 we are talking about some 3,000 young men from Western countries — 2,500 from Western Europe, at least 700 of them from France, 400 from Britain and another 70 from the United States. An increase of hundreds of percentage points a year.
As part of its PR campaign, the ISIS organization releases videos presenting its adventures. Whoever hasn't seen it will find it difficult to understand the horror. A terrifying passion for murder.
For example, a fatal patrol of ISIS men passes on a road filled with cars and exterminates all the passengers with a submachine gun. Why? They include Sunni women wearing a burqa with their children. But the jihadists aim at them too.
A volunteer from Belgium gladly gave an interview while driving a vehicle dragging dozens of bodies of people who had been slaughtered minutes earlier. A volunteer from Germany, Philip Bergner, a Muslim convert, posted a picture of himself smiling alongside severed heads. According to reports from Syria, the British are the cruelest of them all.
It doesn't just happen in Syria and Iraq. Volunteers have arrived in Afghanistan in the past, and volunteers arrive in Somalia from the West. They don't kill Zionists or Americans. They kill Muslims. Most of the victims of the Boko Haram organization in Nigeria are Muslims too.
Several days ago, ISIS posted a video aimed at recruiting Western volunteers. One of its stars is a young British man named Ali Kalantar. His father, Rahim Kalantar, told the BBC that his son was radicalized by an imam at his local mosque in Coventry.
In as early as 2007, a study revealed that 600 of 1,350 mosques in Britain are run under the Deobandi school of thought, spreading hatred towards the West and anti-Semitic propaganda. The British intelligence leaked at the time that the Tablighi Jamaat movement, which is in charge of building a mega-mosque in London, is recruiting members to al-Qaeda.
Yet even Islamic preaching in mosques does not solve the big riddle: What turns a person who arrived in Syria and Iraq from Paris or London into an animal? Why, after just several weeks, or even days, in the capacity of a fighter, does he carry out a mass murder against other Muslims?
A study revealed that these people tend to join the most murderous groups. They left groups affiliated with al-Qaeda, like Jabhat al-Nusra, in favor of ISIS. The battle is not against a tyrant regime, not against heretics, and not even against Shiites — but between Sunnis and Sunnis.
We must remember one more thing: Most young Muslims in Europe have not joined the jihad, but those who have reflect radicalization processes which millions of young people are going through. The volunteers even come from places like Sweden and Denmark, and experts say one of the main reasons is an identity crisis. It's true.
Is that the explanation for why they become serial killers at an incomprehensible speed? There are millions of other young people and immigrants and foreigners in the world suffering from an identity crisis, but that doesn't turn them into animals.
Our progressive circles have the habit of blaming Israel's firm hand for young people's radicalization. That's an interesting argument, because the volunteers from Europe have not undergone any occupation experience. They have not been humiliated in any checkpoint. They have not developed hostility because of a night curfew. Many of them have been a symbol of integration and success.
These are Muslims who kill Muslims. These are the facts.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
07/06/2014
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Top|| File under: Islamic State of Iraq & the Levant
#1
They are yearning for the hope & changy thing...
[IsraelTimes] Violent protests continued into the early morning hours of Sunday in Jerusalem as angry Paleostinian demonstrators clashed with Israeli police at multiple sites in the capital.
The protests have been escalating for days, since the brutal kidnapping and murder last week of a Paleostinian teenager, which police increasingly believe was carried out by Jewish Lions of Islam in retaliation for the kidnapping and murder of three Jewish teenagers on June 12 by a Hebron-based Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, cell.
Clashes between police and protesters, nearly all of them young Paleostinian men, were reported in the East Jerusalem neighborhoods of Kalandiya, Isawiya and A-Tur. A few protesters were tossed in the clink Book 'im, Mahmoud! late Saturday, but there were no immediate reports of injuries.
Meanwhile, ...back at the bunker, his Excellency called a hurried meeting of his closest advisors. It was to be his last. They discussed the officers's efficiency rating system... reports of violent incidents throughout the capital mounted overnight.
Firefighters were battling a blaze between Har Homa and the Mar Elias Monastery in southern Jerusalem that authorities believe was started by a Molotov cocktail aimed at Jewish drivers on the nearby road.
In Sharafat, an Arab village near the southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo, some 200 demonstrators were clashing with police. A similar clash between police and dozens of rock-throwing Paleostinians took place in the Antonia neighborhood in Jerusalem's Old City.
Also in the Old City, a Jewish woman was lightly injured when she was attacked by a group of Paleostinian men, who fled when her husband arrived and fired his gun into the air. Police said they were pursuing the attackers.
A Molotov cocktail was thrown at a thoroughfare in the southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo, and two grenades were hurled at security forces near Rachel's Tomb, on the road to Bethlehem south of Jerusalem. No one was injured in either incident.
A Jewish vehicle was reportedly attacked by masked Paleostinian men near the contentious Maaleh Hazeytim neighborhood on the Mount of Olives east of the Old City.
According to the Haredi news site Behadrey Haredim, some 15 Paleostinian men entered Yeshivat Hatfutsoth, a religious seminary on Mount Zion, on Saturday and threw stones into the seminary dining hall. The yeshiva's students responded by throwing chairs, food and boiling water at the intruders.
Several Paleostinians sustained burns and expeditiously departed at a goodly pace, the site reported.
"This is a precedent," yeshiva head Rabbi Avraham Goldstein was quoted as saying. "This is the first time something like this has happened on Mount Zion. We have good relations with all the religions in this place, and we hope the police will treat this incident with utmost seriousness."
At least two Israeli buses were also pelted with stones on Saturday night, one in East Jerusalem near Mount Scopus and the other near the West Bank village of A'uja, just north of Jericho. In the Mount Scopus incident, the driver and two passengers sustained light wounds and were evacuated by MDA to the nearby Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus. In the second incident, the driver was lightly maimed and damage was caused to the bus and a nearby car.
Paleostinians reported on Saturday night that dozens of Jewish demonstrators had entered the Arab neighborhood of Beit Tzafafa, in southern Jerusalem, and threw rocks at Paleostinian homes and vehicles. Police reportedly responded with crowd-dispersal weapons.
Earlier Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with top security officials, Channel 2 reported, and instructed them to meet violence and unrest with a firm hand, adding that lawbreakers would be dealt with severely.
In Nazareth, as many as 1,000 protesters erupted into the streets on Saturday evening in a rally marked by some outbursts of violence, including rock throwing directed at police and the Molotov cocktailing of a municipal garbage can.
Rocks were thrown at vehicles driving on Route 2, the main Tel Aviv-Haifa coastal highway on Saturday night. No one was hurt in the incident.
Police forces were deployed to the Galilee town of Taybe on Saturday to keep Road 444, which cuts through the town, from being blocked by protesters. Demonstrators nevertheless erupted into the streets in the evening, after breaking the Ramadan fast, lit tires on fire, threw stones at the entrance to the city and barricaded a handful of smaller streets.
"There are only a few protesters lighting tires and throwing stones at the entrance to the town," one resident told the Hebrew-language news site Walla. "Most residents are in their homes, walking in the streets or sitting in cafes."
Heavy rioting was reported in the Wadi Ara region of northern Israel, home to a large Arab Israeli population. Police said they were pelted with stones and responded with crowd control weapons in several incidents in the area on Saturday.
Demonstrations also took place on Saturday outside Kalanswa, east of Netanya, following violent festivities with security forces early Saturday. Hundreds of people rolled their eyes, jumped up and down, and hollered poorly rhymed slogans real loud, hurled rocks and burned tires in several demonstrations in the area. Police arrived at the scene and, after calling on the demonstrators to disperse peacefully, attempted to break up the crowds with anti-riot gear.
Roads in and out of the two towns were closed off by security forces. A police spokesperson said that officers would allow "any legitimate expression of protest, but any disorderly conduct will be met firmly and decisively."
The mayor of Kalanswa attempted to calm Arab residents, calling on them to avoid rioting and leave the streets.
On Saturday morning, a 20-year-old motorcyclist was attacked by demonstrators near the entrance to Kalanswa while driving along the road into the town. He was hospitalized in moderate condition at Meir Hospital in nearby Kfar Saba.
The incident followed several attacks on Jewish drivers by masked men on road 5614 into Kalanswa, which was blocked due to burning tires overnight Friday.
The masked men began asking drivers stuck on the road if they were Jewish. Two of the drivers who answered back in Hebrew were dragged from their cars and beaten. One of them managed to get back in his car and drive away while the other escaped on foot. His car was set on fire.
A police officer in uniform was also attacked on the road. He escaped on foot and his vehicle sustained damage.
Several Molotov cocktails were thrown at the Jewish village of Mei Ami in the Wadi Ara region on Saturday. Police were called to the scene.
An unnamed senior police source was quoted in Israeli media on Saturday as saying that festivities in East Jerusalem and in Israel's Arab communities were expected to escalate in the coming days, with "more and more people joining the riots."
Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch said earlier Saturday that there would be zero tolerance for people who decided to take the law into their own hands. Aharonovitch said police would not allow violent disturbances to go unanswered and promised that justice would be served to "troublemakers."
He also urged police to act responsibly and with restraint due to the fragile situation created with the discovery on Monday of the bodies of the three slain Israeli teenagers, Eyal Yifrah, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16, and the subsequent discovery of the body of the Paleostinian teenager, 16-year-old Muhammed Abu Khdeir, in a Jerusalem forest two days later in what is increasingly believed to have been a reprisal attack.
On Sunday, Paleostinian officials reported that the autopsy of 16-year-old Abu Khdeir, conducted jointly by Israeli and Paleostinian pathologists, has revealed that the youth was still alive when he was set on fire. His funeral on Friday was attended by thousands and preceded and followed violent festivities with security forces in East Jerusalem which later spread to Israeli Arab towns, including Kalanswa, Tira, Taibe and Baqa al-Gharbiya.
Police arrested 31 people in connection with the rioting overnight Friday-Saturday in which hundreds of Arab Israelis burned tires and clashed with security forces.
#1
A few more wash, clean, and rinse cycles should do it for the Israelis.
I always thought Israel should have kept their conquered lands after the 6-day war. They should have told all the do-gooders (such as Carter, etc.) in the West to go take a flying flip...
[Libya Herald] A video purporting to show a captured member of Ansar al-Sharia ...a Salafist militia which claims it is not part of al-Qaeda, even though it works about the same and for the same ends. There are groups of the same name in Libyaand Yemen, with the Libyan versions currently most active. Tunisia's Shabaab al-Tawhid started out an Ansar al-Sharia and changed its name in early 2014. It still uses the old name now and then, probably because the stationery's not all used up and the web site hasn't expired yet... admitting during interrogation to having murdered a number of people in Benghazi in return for payment by the organization is authentic, the head of Operation Dignity's air forces has claimed.
Air Force Brigadier-General , who until January last year was chief of staff of the Libyan Air Force, said that the man seen being interrogated in the recording was just one of a number of members of Ansar who had been caught since Operation Dignity was launched.
"We have a lot of them," he said, adding that they included a senior Ansar leader.
The video, which appeared on a number of TV channels, shows an evidently frightened young man, said to have been placed in durance vile Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try! in Marj, admitting to six killings. Intially, he stated, he was not paid but later was given between LD 1,500 and LD 2,000 per killing. He also said that there were many in Ansar who were not Libyan. He mentioned Algerians, Tunisians and Aghans.
Geroushi similarly claimed today that among members of Ansar who had been captured there were Algerians and Tunsians.
He would not, however, give names or numbers of those caught.
In confident mood, he said the reason why there was less apparent action at present in Benghazi was because it was Ramadan and Operation Dignity wanted to try and avoid killing in the holy month.
But Ansar were becoming weaker, he declared. They were running out of ammunition and funds and some of them, he said, had asked to negotiate with Operation Dignity forces.
"We refused. We will not do it," he insisted.
Ansar has made no statement about the video.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/06/2014
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[DAWN] FINALLY, Pakistain has declared its own 'war on terrorism'. The North Wazoo operation, the prime minister's pronouncements and the adoption of the Protection of Pakistain Bill by the National Assembly are significant signals of serious intent to rid the country of the terrorist menace.
To succeed, the government will have to plan and pursue a comprehensive strategy and utilise all relevant instruments of state power — military, police, intelligence, diplomatic and economic.
The North Waziristan operation was long in coming. The political reticence was overcome by the failure of the talks with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP) and its relentless acts of terrorism. The attack on the Bloody Karachi
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
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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.
Wazoo
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Wazoo
[CONNECTICUT.CBSLOCAL] It may not destroy your soul, but it turns out heavy metal music can be hazardous to your brain. At least in some rare cases.
[DAWN] Gullu "Stinky" Butt, the baton-wielding man seen damaging vehicles in Lahore, filed a bail petition in a local court on Saturday, DawnNews reported.
Several people were killed when a powerful suicide car bomb exploded near Somalia's parliament in the capital Mogadishu on Saturday, police and witnesses said. AlQaeda-linked al Shabaab rebels claimed responsibility for the bombing, the latest in a surge of attacks in Mogadishu during Islam's holy month of Ramadhan.
Chicago was hit with a burst of gun violence on the Fourth of July, with at least 21 people shot during an 11-hour stretch from Friday evening into Saturday morning, according to police.
It appears that Israel is finally be 
[An Nahar] Eight members of a single family were killed on Saturday when Syrian aircraft dropped explosive-packed barrel bombs on a town in the southern Syrian province of Daraa, a monitor said.
[NYTimes] The details of the latest case were murky. The news media reports suggested that the man, a midlevel employee of the Federal Intelligence Service, was originally arrested on suspicion of spying for Russia. The Kremlin has markedly stepped up recruitment of German informants since the uprisings in Ukraine and the resulting sanctions aimed at Russia's economy.
Iraq's prime minister removed the chief of the army's ground forces and the head of the federal police from their posts Saturday as part of his promised shakeup in the security forces following their near collapse in the face of a militant blitz last month, an official said.
[DAWN] An anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Lahore on Saturday charged five suspects in connection with the murder of 25-year-old Farzana Iqbal who was stoned to death outside the Lahore High Court, DawnNews reported.
Wazoo
[Jpost] Four days after the alleged revenge killing of Palestinian teen Muhammad Abu Khdeir convulsed the nation, one of the six unidentified Jewish extremists arrested early Sunday morning in the brutal murder confessed to the crime.
[ARABNEWS] A 
Goodluck Jonathan
Currently the Interior Minister of Pakistain. He is the senior leader of the Pak Moslem League (N) and a close aide to Nawaz 
Pervez 
...One of the major players in Pak terrorism. In early 1994, India incarcerated him for his terrorist activities. In 1995, foreign tourists were kidnapped in Jammu and Kashmir. The kidnappers included the release of Masood Azhar among their demands. One of the hostages managed to escape but the rest were eventually killed. In 1999, he was freed by the Indian government in exchange for passengers on hijacked Indian Airlines Flight 814 that had been diverted to Kandahar. The hijackers were led by Masood Azhar's brother, Ibrahim Athar. Once he was handed over to the hijackers, they fled to Pak territory despite the fact that Islamabad had earlier stated that any of the hijackers would be 
