Interesting set of facts and allegations concerning a Female Russian Operative who initially entered this country under the cover of an F-1 Student Visaa few years back , working in conjunction with what appears to be one or more Russian GRU Operatives operating out of the Wash DC Russian Embassy. I don't see Robert Mueller's, Comey, or Strzok's signatures/fingerprints anywhere in this criminal complaint. He must be slipping !
h/t puppyblender
[LibertyBlitzkrieg]...The CIA’s former chief of Russia operations, Steven L. Hall, told Shane: "If you ask an intelligence officer, did the Russians break the rules or do something bizarre, the answer is no, not at all." Hall added that "the United States ’absolutely’ has carried out such election influence operations historically, and I hope we keep doing it."
...Nothing gets the phony "Resistance," corporate media and neocons more hysterical than when Trump isn’t belligerent enough while meeting with foreign leaders abroad. While the pearl clutching was intense during the North Korea summit, the reoccurring, systematic outrage spectacle was taken to entirely new levels of stupidity and hyperbole during yesterday’s meeting with Putin in Finland.
The clown parade really got going after compulsive liar and former head of the CIA under Barack Obama, John Brennan, accused Trump of treason on Twitter ‐ which resistance drones dutifully retweeted, liked and permanently enshrined within the gospel of Russiagate.
#1
the reoccurring, systematic outrage spectacle was taken to entirely new levels of stupidity and hyperbole during yesterday’s meeting with Putin in Finland.
I think we are just seeing the beginning. If these people weren't such a pain in the arse and obstructionists, they'd be laughable. The more that gets uncovered, the more the left-wing insanity gets ratcheted up.
"...A unclassified document printed on FBI letterhead dated January 20, 2016, which contains the subject line “Supplemental Classification Review and Determinationwas addressed to the Bureau of National Security’s..."
Assistant Secretary Gregory B. Starr from Peter Strzok who is listed as “Section Chief” of the “Counterespionage Section” in reference to Strzok’s CIA post. Keep in mind, this is not an FBI post as Strzok’s position at the FBI is “Deputy Assistant Director Counterintelligence Division” not “Section Chief” which is a CIA post...."
CIA undoubtedly has section chiefs but the FBI does too. In the FBI the counterespionage section is one of the orgs reporting to the Counterintelligence Division. Probably both the Division and the section are headed by careerists.
Posted by: lord garth ||
07/18/2018 15:38
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#2
Peter Strzok - international man of mistery. Ye baby!
#1
Strzok was born in 1970 and probably spent no more than a year or two in Iran (before the revolution) as well as a year or two in Africa and probably some time elsewhere.
Strzok went to high school and college in the US. Served in the US Army (probably in counter Intel so we won't be able to get any details) and joined the FBI in 1996. With respect to working for Obama and Brennan in Iran affairs we have only the word of an unidentified person.
Posted by: lord garth ||
07/18/2018 14:16
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[FOX] New York billionaire George Soros said former President Barack Obama was his "greatest disappointment," during a wide-ranging interview with the New York Times published on Tuesday, while also appearing to distance himself from partisan politics.
The wealthy liberal donor, who was an early supporter of Obama’s 2008 presidential run, told The Times that Obama was "actually my greatest disappointment," before he was reportedly prompted by an aide to clarify that he was dissatisfied on a "professional level," rather than with his presidency.
At another part of the interview, he told the paper that Obama "closed the door" on him after he secured the presidency.
#1
At another part of the interview, he told the paper that Obama "closed the door" on him after he secured the presidency.
Oh, dear! You spend all that time and effort getting your puppet in place and they don't follow orders. Sucks to be You!
[Guardian] Since launching his bid for America’s top office, Donald Trump has figured prominently in Canada’s national conversation; he’s been called a fascist, and a bully, and was unanimously condemned by parliamentarians after he lashed out at the prime minister, Justin Trudeau.
But one voice has consistently lauded the US president: Conrad Black, the man who once controlled one of the world’s largest English-language newspaper empires.
From his home in Toronto, Black has emerged as one of the president’s most outspoken supporters, arguing America’s 45th president is exactly what the US needed.
"I think he’s done quite well," said Black, rattling off a list of claims that have been widely challenged ‐ or proven to be untrue. "I think you would have to say that he’s cut illegal immigration by 50%, he’s certainly produced economic progress and has dealt effectively with the greatest single foreign policy issue so far: North Korea."
Such assertions reflect the breezy, positive spin that is at the heart of Black’s latest book, Donald J Trump: A President Like No Other.
[10News] Former FBI Director James Comey is urging "all who believe in this country's values" to vote for Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. We all knew he was
In a tweet on Tuesday evening, Comey called the Republican-held Congress "incapable of fulfilling the Founders' design."
"This Republican Congress has proven incapable of fulfilling the Founders' design that 'Ambition must ... counteract ambition.' All who believe in this country's values must vote for Democrats this fall. Policy differences don't matter right now. History has its eyes on us," he wrote.
Comey, who was fired by President Donald Trump in May 2017, also spoke out Monday against the President's comments at his joint news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/18/2018
07:00 ||
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[5 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
In a tweet on Tuesday evening, Comey called the Republican-held Congress "incapable of fulfilling the Founders' design."
#3
I was going to vote Responsible Republican this fall, but now I can do it with the Joy of knowing that I will be spitting into James Comey's face while doing so.
At some point the populist rebellion will outgrow its personality roots and be asked to articulate a program. It is never enough in the long run to merely be against something; it is always necessary to be for something. Inside the chaos of the last decade a few themes have appeared to risen above the bedlam. The following is an attempt to speculatively predict these trends in the knowledge the estimate may be completely wrong.
The basic premise is the populist crisis has been created by the 21st century itself. As the post World War 2 order aged the existing elites simply evaded the question of quo vadis secure in the belief they were at the end of history. They started rearranging the flowers on the margin, tidying up the carbon, de-triggering speech and pursuing gender equality. Like some physicists at the start of the 20th century they had presided over an achievement so great that psychologically they may have felt that nothing could be added. There was no sense of being under geopolitical threat, even after 9/11, the rise of China or the stirrings of Russia.
...By contrast the Chinese elites were both strategically restless and uninhibited. They didn't stop in the middle of a thought and ask "is this gender neutral"? The only question China asked was: does this work for China? They saw the in the 21st technology not a perfection of destiny but an obvious opportunity to leapfrog and break away. A race was on and only China, among the major powers, seemed to hear the starting gun. The Western public heard it too, but their ruling elites did not.
The Western publics sensing the erosion, with a dread amplified not only by the indifference of the elites but by a lack of a clear conception of the threat and alternatives to it, attempted to enter any port in the storm. Populism presented itself in the motley attire of borrowed, half-baked political finery. Because it was half-baked it appeared to its opponents in bewildering guises. Few noticed one crucial common factor: it arose in the West through elections. Neither Russia nor China produced anything similar.
Clearly if Western populism is to become not simply a negative force or hijacked in a wayward direction the sooner it articulates its objectives the less confusing and threatening it will be. A careful listener will hear themes in the apparent cacaphony. The inner logic of its tendencies imply a political program resembling something like the following:
Goal
Dominate the technological civilizational developments of the 21st century instead of China.
Be the first and dominant nation into outer space economy. "How the Waste Was Won"
Strategy to achieve the goal
Break the elite structures standing in the way of innovation
Neutralize Russia and neuter radical Islam
Make [America, Europe, UK ...] capable of taking on a China that is presently more efficient in key areas
Tactical Elements of each strategic element
Wage class warfare against the elites
Provide a modest middle class tax cut to win over the liberal working class
Throttle illegal immigration to open low end jobs and raise wages for African Americans (operation Walk Away)
Collapse Russia, defang the MENA oil powers
Increase oil and gas production. Make America a bigger oil producer than Saudi Arabia
Increase defense spending
Create a Space Force
Rearrange Navy deployments to increase readiness. The Navy is wearing out as shown by USS McCain, Fitzgerald collisions
Create a competitive America by increasing subsidiarity within the limits of the Constitution
Corporate tax cut to repatriate investment to America from corporate money parked overseas;
Drastically reduce regulatory bureaucracy;
Allow individuals to own their own knowledge instead of appropriating it as AI training sets.
Dump all encumbrances standing in the way of American dominance in
Biotech;
Nanotechnology and materials
Advanced computing;
Orbital and space engineering
Of course this is not the actual program of populism; at present there is no such thing. It represents a guess at what politicians are actually doing, even unconsciously. Yet someday something deliberate must arise to fill the void that became obvious in 2016. The era of Trump, Farage, etc like things human, must come to an end. Even liberalism may finally leave its 19th century Marxist roots behind. The one thing no one can stop is the march of time.
The great political opportunity of the next decade is to find a consensus strategy built on the best instincts of MAGA and the Resistance. It will be a great race with China and better for the world if there is more than one runner in the lists.
[Quartz] Johannesburg - Barack Obama could have been appearing on a pop-star’s stage. Yet the message he delivered in the annual Nelson Mandela lecture was far more somber than the setting.
The elite class whose rise has been fueled by their outsized share of global riches, he said in very direct terms, needs to take care of those left behind.
"For all the magnificence of the global economy, all the shining skyscrapers that have transformed the landscape around the world, entire communities, entire neighborhoods, entire cities, entire regions have been bypassed," Obama declared. "For far too many people, the more things have changed, the more things stay the same."
A crowd of 15,000 had given the former US president a standing ovation as he walked on, and again when he took to the podium. Some even chanted his 2008 campaign slogan, "Yes we can!"
Previous speakers at for the Mandela lecture have included high-profile names like Bill Clinton, Mo Ibrahim and Bill Gates, yet it was the first time that the lecture was held in a stadium. Visitors to the Wanderers cricket stadium in Johannesburg’s northern suburbs dressed up for the occasion. To reward them for braving the South African winter, the Nelson Mandela foundation handed out blankets in the open-air venue.
#2
You Owe the world a huge debt. Undre you, I saw Iraq, Syria, Libya, Honduras, Venezuela, El Salvador and many others collapse you piece of dog shit.
South Africa is not an Apartheid State as Zimbabwe was which you also backed you cretin.
One good thing I have to say about this evil assHOLE is I will never see him again when he dies.
[CBS] Special counsel Robert Mueller's team has asked Judge T.S. Ellis in Virginia to grant immunity to and protect the identities of five individuals who are set to testify against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Mueller's team says that identifying the individuals would result in "risk of their undue harassment." The filing also notes that there's a concern that the witnesses' "invocation of their privilege against self-incrimination and the court's subsequent grant of immunity could lead to reputation harm for the witnesses."
Prosecutors for the special counsel note that the five individuals in question are "third parties who have not been charged in this matter, and who have not been identified publicly with the case."
According to the memo, the motions say that the five people "will not testify or provide other information on the basis of their privilege against self-incrimination, and that the government is requesting that the Court compel them to testify at the upcoming trial."
Manafort was most recently moved to an Alexandria, Virginia jail pending his trial, after previously being detained at a facility in Northern Neck, Virginia where he said in taped conversations that he was being treated like a "VIP" and has access to all the paperwork he needs to prepare his defense.
His trial in the Eastern District of Virginia is set to begin a week from tomorrow, July 25th.
#2
On what charge is he held?
On what warrant?
What FISA Warrant request for a Counter Intelligence probe?
How does this turn into a Felony investigation? At what POINT?
You have gone fishing and you are horrible lawman and a worse human. And if I did Chamber on this, I would release Manafort of the basis that you deprived a Man of His Liberty without these 5 witnesses.
Raid a Family Home at 4 AM, and make a search and seizure on a CI Investigation sounds to me like Mueller is really up the river with no paddle and needs to consult a lawyer of his own.
You have NO POINT OF Evidence or scope and your FISA Warrant means nothing in THIS Court you dumb asshole.
One more abuse of power is all I ask for Mueller because I go after YOU next.
#9
No further investigative information on the DNC Awan tech issue, the Debbie Wasserman Schultz laptop, or the 30,000 missing Clinton emails can be released. All of this data is now part of an ongoing indictment involving 12 Russian hackers. An indictment that will likely span years, possibly decades before final resolution.
#13
If Mueller's case depends on secret witnesses, it's hard to see how he actually tries this case. I'd look for a chickenshit plea deal on the eve of trial.
Which for some reason reminds me of the old Arkansas lawyer who was so good that he got a charge of "sodomy" reduced to "following too close."
Posted by: Matt ||
07/18/2018 11:31
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#15
Right, JohnQC, the main purpose for this immunity is to shield these five from liability for their own crimes of colluding to subvert a presidential election.
[Guardian] Australian scientists have developed the world’s first blood test to detect melanoma in its early stages.
Early trials of the test involving 209 people showed it was capable of picking up early stage melanoma in 81.5% of cases.
The next step for the scientists from Edith Cowan University is to carry out clinical trials to validate their findings, with hopes the test could be commercially available in about three to five years.
Professor Mel Ziman, head of the Melanoma Research Group at the university, said the test has the potential to save thousands of lives.
It can help deliver a more accurate diagnosis of early-stage melanoma, which can be tricky to detect with the human eye, particularly if small.
The test could also benefit people living in rural areas where it’s hard to get to a dermatologist.
MENASHA, Wis. (WFRV) - A 37-year-old woman suffered injuries to her face after falling in between a gap on the Racine Street Bridge while on her bike, according to Menasha Police.
Police say around 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday, the woman rode her bike into the opening between the bridge approach area, and the bridge span. The span was in the up position at the time.
According to witnesses. passerbys were able to assist the woman from the gap, along with her bike. The woman was transported to Thedacare Regional Medical Center - Neenah, where she was treated for facial injuries.
Police tell us alcohol is believed to have been a factor. The incident is still under investigation.
[Wash Times] The Windy City may soon experiment with giving its citizens cash windfalls via a universal basic income pilot program.
Chicago alderman Ameya Pawar appears to be well on his way to convincing colleagues to test his UBI program for 1,000 families. His goal is to transfer $500 each month in stipends ‐ without conditions ‐ to citizens.
"Nearly 70 percent of Americans don’t have $1,000 in the bank for an emergency," Mr. Pawartold The Intercept for an interview published Monday. "UBI could be an incredible benefit for people who are working and are having a tough time making ends meet or putting food on the table at the end of the month. ... It’s time to start thinking about direct cash transfers to people so that they can start making plans about how they’re going to get by."
Mr. Pawar’s bill would also implement a process known as "smoothing" for families taking part in the Earned Income Tax Credit program; they would be paid monthly instead of annually.
"Our hope, that I know will be born out in this pilot, is that it will show that when we smooth out the EITC, and we provide a monthly basic income to 1,000 families, that they will be able to plan for expenses, they can make decisions about savings, they can make decisions about investing, they could make decisions about how they could deal with a financial emergency, just like all families do," Mr. Pawar said. "And once implemented, we’ll be able to hopefully scale it."
Not mentioned by the official was how the debt-ridden city would pay for an expansion of such a program.
#4
Not mentioned by the official was how the debt-ridden city would pay for an expansion of such a program.
Why, the Magic Money Tree(tm) of course. The principle of fiduciary responsibility need to be extend to government officials that indenture future generations for debt con games like this.
#7
Single mom, two kids one young that seemed to be in and out of juvenile detention, was holding down various cashier jobs in the university town. Working in a university town means there is a glut of college kids that want a temp job --- so low pay.
Anyway, the State Child Support was about 1500$ per month and every single dollar she earned in wages was deducted from that support. It may keep "some" people from sponging off of the common purse, but the hidden effect is that once you fall down there is every incentive to not try to return to your feet.
#10
But in terms of buying votes, the promise is as good as actually executing it, and then they can blame President Trump for not letting them have “their” money.
#13
Chicago and Illinois is broke. Who do they figure is going to pay for this? You will have many non-tax paying people flooding in for the free money while others are fleeing the state.
#14
This "gimme" is merely the political tactic of the unknown guy running against 2 white billionaires running for gov. Its working for him to get noticed.
[Barley a Blog] Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies, history, and politics at New York University and Princeton University, to Tucker Carlson:
"I want my president to do what every other president has done. Meet with the head of the Kremlin to avoid an existential crisis‐war‐between the two nuclear superpowers. Sit with the other side and walk back the conflict. The Trump hunters, however, prefer trying to impeach Trump to averting nuclear disaster.
[American Thinker] I spent a good part of yesterday watching the vast army of those incapable of generating an original thought ‐ namely, the majority of talking heads on radio and television as well as politicians in both parties, droning on about the disaster that was the Trump-Putin press conference in Helsinki. Once the first narrative was proffered by one of this gaggle, the rest dutifully repeated the talking points as if they were ventriloquist dummies. The bottom line: Trump is a buffoon inalterably subservient to the puppet master, thus betraying his country.
Having watched the press conference, I did not come away this inane version of events.
I come to this subject matter of Donald Trump as someone, during the primary season of 2016, who was unalterably opposed to him, going so far as to write an article, "Why I cannot vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton." However, in November, when standing in the voting booth, staring at the ballot and the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency, I voted for Trump. I am still bothered by some of his mannerisms and, at times, his buffoonish governing style as well as his refusal to address out-of-control spending. But, on the whole I am gratified that he has successfully pursued a predominantly conservative agenda at home and an America First agenda overseas, despite the constant ankle-biting by the mainstream media and the Washington Establishment's determined use of its considerable arsenal to marginalize and ultimately obliterate his presidency.
Regarding the Helsinki press conference and his performance, I come to that issue from the perspective of someone who has experienced firsthand the horrors and the travails of those who survived the most devastating war in human history and the travails extant in the immediate aftermath. I do not wish to see, in my lifetime or in the future, the world again subject to a conflict of that magnitude, made possible by a careless remark or insult or the egocentricity of a megalomaniac.
There is no question that Russia and China are this nation's primary geopolitical foes. While the current Russian Federation is not as powerful as its predecessor, the Soviet Union, it is, nonetheless, a formidable adversary, particularly with Putin at the helm. There is little doubt that the Russians spied on the United States and attempted to sow the seeds of discontent during the 2016 election. Almost as soon as the old Soviet Union was born in the 1920s, it, as national policy, cast a wide net of espionage and destabilization throughout Europe and America. America responded slowly and did not fully reciprocate with its own espionage activities until after World War II and the dawning of the Cold War. This chess match is now approaching its 90th anniversary.
#2
Now that CNN and MSNBC have gone to DEFCON-1, I'm tempted to borrow a page from Orson Welles and phone in a report that Russian battleships are coming up the Mississippi River and disembarking Russian marines equipped with chainsaw bayonets. Attach a photo of a Russian battleship cleverly disguised as a Carnival Lines cruise ship. I'd give it a 50-50 chance of being reported.
Posted by: Matt ||
07/18/2018 11:39
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#3
Why are those so eager to see Trump humiliated and undermined so willing to denigrate and provoke this nation's historical rival? What purpose would it have served to gratuitously insult Putin in front of the entire world? Is destroying Trump of such paramount importance that the potential of Russian retaliation could escalate into further reprisals on both sides leading to a possible lethal conflict as Putin is first and foremost a nationalist and not the most stable of international leaders?
Could Trump have chosen his words better regarding his confidence in the American intelligence community? Yes. But after nearly 18 months of unrelenting leaks and harassment, this same group, led by Robert Mueller, has made it exceedingly difficult to govern, and his annoyance and frustration bubbled out. It should not have, but, nonetheless, it is understandable, as 14 months of Mueller's investigations has revealed no criminal activity by the Trump campaign despite desperately seeking collusion under every rock.
Unlike so many others, I do not want any president of the United States to gratuitously and publicly insult an adversary, be it Russia or China, but instead to hammer out difficult issues in private. Over the history of mankind, too many conflicts and resultant casualties have occurred because of the egocentricity of the leaders over minor issues. Regardless of the hysteria, the Russian attempt to sow chaos during the 2016 election season is a minor issue, as the attempt was not only largely unsuccessful, but amateurishly executed.
Thank you, Donald Trump, for not succumbing to the rabble and instead leaving the door open for candid communication with Russia when and if a major crisis rears its ugly head.
#4
Thank you, Donald Trump, for not succumbing to the rabble and instead leaving the door open for candid communication with Russia when and if a major crisis rears its ugly head.
Mind you, you'll have to take care of the rabble sooner rather than later.
[PJ] What? Did you just read that headline correctly?
Yes, you did. Writing it I assumed people's heads would explode. It's about as far as you can can get from today's conventional wisdom (i.e. what David Gergen thinks). Virtually every member of the smart set from Pelosi to McCain to some ninety-five percent of the media, including several cowards on Fox News, to, alas, Lindsey Graham (who should know better) are going out of their minds excoriating Trump for being soft on Putin, even for being "owned" by the neo-Soviet strongman. John Brennan -- once a communist himself, so he should know -- accused Trump of treason.
Okay, time for that familiar cliche -- the thought experiment. Suppose Trump had done the opposite, exactly what these people demanded -- verbally and viciously assaulted Putin for all his totalitarian tropes from annexing the Crimea to humiliating John Podesta for being so dumb as to fall for a phishing attack (all right -- I'll be fair. For invading the computers of Democratic Party operatives, allegedly to elect Trump) and so forth?
[PJ] Democrat candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has made a huge splash since trouncing incumbent Democrat Joe Crowley in the NY-14 primary, calls herself a socialist and is big on activism, if not geopolitics.
So big on activism, in fact, that in an interview with Democracy Now! on Monday, she called for the "occupation" of airports and ICE offices as part of the effort to "mobilize" the so-called Resistance.
As Newsweek noted, Ocasio-Cortez is now one of the most recognizable faces of the absurd "Abolish ICE" movement that, despite the hesitation of more politically and governmentally savvy Democrats, is gathering steam among the grassroots.
"Our nation is in a moral crisis," said Ocasio-Cortez in response to a question about why she went to the border just three days before the primary election.
"Every day that we allow these two thousand children that have been ripped from their parents -- which is an internationally recognized human rights violation, this is being done in our name, this is being done in representation of us as United States citizens -- every day that we allow the continued violation of those children's rights is the day I believe the moral character of the United States is at stake."
#2
...well, from the bleachers its fun watching full force Socialists parading themselves as the new 'Democrats'. They don't even mask themselves anymore. It's refreshing. Now if only we can get the GOPe to join the #WalkAway movement and stop calling them liberals.
h/t Instapundit
[NYTimes] The urge to pull down statues extends well beyond the public squares of nations in turmoil. Lately it has been stirring the air in some corners of science, particularly psychology.
In recent months, researchers and some journalists have strung cables around the necks of at least three monuments of the modern psychological canon:
The famous Stanford Prison Experiment, which found that people playacting as guards quickly exhibited uncharacteristic cruelty.
The landmark marshmallow test, which found that young children who could delay gratification showed greater educational achievement years later than those who could not.
And the lesser known but influential concept of ego depletion ‐ the idea that willpower is like a muscle that can be built up but also tires.
The assaults on these studies aren’t all new. Each is a story in its own right, involving debates over methodology and statistical bias that have surfaced before in some form.
But since 2011, the psychology field has been giving itself an intensive background check, redoing more than 100 well-known studies. Often the original results cannot be reproduced, and the entire contentious process has been colored, inevitably, by generational change and charges of patriarchy. And if it cannot be reproduced, it's not science
...When Dr. Nosek published his first major replication paper in 2015, finding that about 60 percent of prominent studies did not pan out on a second try, it was a gift to skeptics eager to dismiss the entire field (and maybe all of social science) as a joke, a congregation of poorly anchored findings that shift in the wind, like nutrition advice. If it was only psychology, I could live with it
#3
Since the soft sciences such as sociology, poly sci, psychology, and all the new race and gender studies have been politicized, they are all suspect.
Because most studies in psychology are qualitative not quantitative it is difficult to replicate a study in which 800 people were interviewed and the results tabulated and then analyzed. Unless you interview the same people in the same demographic etc., you might find it difficult to replicate.
Especially if the study is phenomenological.
[The Hill] Former FBI Director James Comey called on Americans to vote for Democrats in the midterm elections.
In a tweet Tuesday night, Comey ‐ a longtime Republican who distanced himself from the party in April ‐ slammed the GOP for not standing up to President Trump.
"This Republican Congress has proven incapable of fulfilling the Founders’ design that ’Ambition must ... counteract ambition,’" he tweeted. "All who believe in this country’s values must vote for Democrats this fall."
"Policy differences don’t matter right now," he added. "History has its eyes on us."
h/t Instapundit
An art gallery in Portland, Oregon, removed a window drawing that depicts President Donald Trump being beheaded ISIS style.
The founder of One Grand Gallery in the Northwest city told KPTV-TV that he took down the controversial drawing after threats from Trump supporters and a request from his landlord.
The gallery founder asked to remain anonymous for fear that someone would try to harm him.
The horrific image shows a man whose face is concealed holding Trump’s head with one hand.
#4
About those other countries... Ed Driscoll told the full story about that quote about fascism descending on America, and it's fascinating:
[Guenter] Grass plays a small role in Tom Wolfe's 1976 essay, "The Intelligent Coed’s Guide To America," reprinted in his 1982 anthology The Purple Decades, available on the Kindle and an essential introduction to both Wolfe's early nonfiction, and life in America in the crazed '60s and '70s, which today often reads stranger than fiction. Wolfe uses a statement from Grass as a springboard for the saying he helped enter into widespread distribution: "The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe." The two men shared the stage at a ruckus 1965 panel at Princeton University, dominated both on the panel and in the audience by paranoid lefties convinced that fellow Democrat Lyndon Johnson was the new fascistic boogieman*, including Allen Ginsberg and Merry Prankster Paul Krassner, about whom Wolfe notes:
The next thing I knew, the discussion was onto the subject of fascism in America. Everybody was talking about police repression and the anxiety and paranoia as good folks waited for the knock on the door and the descent of the knout on the nape of the neck. I couldn't make any sense out of it. I had just made a tour of the country to write a series called “The New Life Out There” for New York magazine. This was the mid-1960’s. The post-World War II boom had by now pumped money into every level of the population on a scale unparalleled in any nation in history. Not only that, the folks were running wilder and freer than any people in history. For that matter, Krassner himself, in one of the strokes of exuberance for which he was well known, was soon to publish a slight hoax: an account of how Lyndon Johnson was so overjoyed about becoming President that he had buggered a wound in the neck of John F. Kennedy on Air Force One as Kennedy’s body was being flown back from Dallas. Krassner presented this as a suppressed chapter from William Manchester’s book Death of a President. Johnson, of course, was still President when it came out. Yet the merciless gestapo dragnet missed Krassner, who cleverly hid out onstage at Princeton on Saturday nights.
Suddenly I heard myself blurting out over my microphone: “My God, what are you talking about? We’re in the middle of a … Happiness Explosion!”
That merely sounded idiotic. The kid up in the balcony did the crying baby. The kid down below did the raccoon … Krakatoa, East of Java … I disappeared in a tidal wave of rude sounds … Back to the goon squads, search-and-seize and roust-a-daddy …
Support came from a quarter I hadn’t counted on. It was Grass, speaking in English.
“For the past hour I have my eyes fixed on the doors here,” he said. “You talk about fascism and police repression. In Germany when I was a student, they come through those doors long ago. Here they must be very slow.”
Grass was enjoying himself for the first time all evening. He was not simply saying, “You really don’t have so much to worry about.” He was indulging his sense of the absurd. He was saying: “You American intellectuals—you want so desperately to feel besieged and persecuted!”
He sounded like Jean-François Revel, a French socialist writer who talks about one of the great unexplained phenomena of modern astronomy: namely, that the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.
[Free Beacon] The chair of the House Intelligence Committee accused the FBI and Department of Justice of stonewalling a sprawling investigation into claims the Trump campaign colluded with Russia with the hope of running out the clock until the November elections, when they anticipate Democrats will regain control of the House and dissolve an ongoing probe that has uncovered evidence U.S. officials sought to cripple Trump's campaign.
Rep. Devin Nunes (R., Calif.), in a wide-ranging audio interview with his House colleague Rep. Sean Duffy (R., Wis.), accused top officials at the FBI and DOJ of "putting all their chips on the Republicans losing the House" so that their Democratic allies can "shut down" the longstanding Intelligence Committee probe, which has unearthed information disputing claims of collusion in recent months.
#1
Democrats will regain control of the House and dissolve an ongoing probe that has uncovered evidence U.S. officials sought to cripple Trump's campaign.
I'd vote against the Dems just because they are doing this.
Kirkuk (Iraqinews.com) – Two Iraqi children were killed Tuesday in a bomb attack in al-Hawija district in oil-rich Kirkuk, a security source from the province was quoted as saying.
"Two brothers, identified as Hamad and Iyad Farahat Gomaa, were killed as an explosive charge detonated in al-Rashidiya district in Hawija, 45 km west of Kirkuk," Iraqi website Shafaaq News quoted the source as saying.
"The two bodies were moved to the forensic medicine department," the source added.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Islamic State (IS) militant group, in most cases, is responsible for attacks targeting crowded areas, including markets, cafes and mosques across Iraq.
Iraqi security forces, backed by paramilitary troops of al-Hashd al-Shaabi and Peshmerga fighters, had launched a military operation dubbed Martyrs' Revenge to chase Islamic State militants at their hotbeds in Kirkuk, Diyala and Salahuddin provinces.
Kirkuk (Iraqinews.com) – Up to 14 members of Islamic State were killed Tuesday in a series of airstrikes on Kirkuk province by the U.S.-led international coalition warplanes, a security source was quoted as saying.
"Airstrikes launched by fighter jets of the U.S.-led international coalition have targeted several terrorist hotbeds of Islamic State in northwestern Kirkuk, leaving 14 militants dead," Baghdad Post website quoted the source.
The source added that the airstrikes "were carried out in coordination with Iraqi intelligence agencies."
Kirkuk (IraqiNews.com) An Iraqi police commander was killed when a roadside bomb hit his convoy in Kirkuk province, north of the country, a security source was quoted saying on Tuesday.
The source told Alsumaria News that a Federal Police force was on a search mission in Albu-Najm village, Daquq, south of Kirkuk, when an explosive device went off, killing commander of the 1st regiment of the 16th brigade of the Iraqi police force.
Kirkuk has seen occasional bloody attacks against civilians and security forces since Iraqi forces drove out Kurdish troops following the political standoff resulting from the referendum in which Kurdistan Region voted for independence from Iraq. Most of the attacks have been claimed by Islamic State militants, which, the Iraqi government had said, lost its bastions in Iraq late 2017.
Iraqi premier Haider al-Abadi had ordered military operations in Kirkuk in retaliation for the execution of eight Iraqis by Islamic State militants at the province last month.
The militants had posted a video threatening the execution of the victims if Iraqi authorities to not free female detainees affiliated with the group. The abductee' corpses were later found outside Kirkuk.
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[KhaamaPress] The supporters of Junbish Milli party have warned the government of uprisings if their demands are not met.
Hundreds of supporters of Junbish party started protests in northeastern Takhar province of Afghanistan today amid reports several roads connecting the northern and northeastern provinces have been blocked.
The protesters demand the immediate release of the acting police chief of Qaisar district of Faryab Nizamuddin Qaisari.
They also demand the immediate return of the First Vice President of Afghanistan General Abdul Rashid Dostum ...ethnic Uzbek warlord who distinguished himself fighting the Soviets and the Taliban. The story that he had a bad guy run over with a tank is an exaggeration. It was an armored personnel carrier... from The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... The acting police chief of Qaisar district of Faryab Nizamuddin Qaisari was incarcerated You have the right to remain silent... by the security forces on charges of violating laws.
The 209th Shaheen Corps of the Afghan Military in the North had earlier said Qaisari was arrested following a scuffle with the security forces.
In the meantime, reports indicate that the protesters have blocked the roads connecting Takhar province with the northern Kunduz and northeastern Badakhshan province of Afghanistan.
[AnNahar] Air strikes on Tuesday killed more than a dozen civilians in parts of Syria's south near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, a war monitor said.
The Damascus regime has been pounding the southwestern province of Quneitra since Sunday in a bid to retake it from rebels, after winning back most of the neighbouring governorate of Daraa in less than a month.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said air strikes killed 14 civilians in the village of Ain al-Tina on Quneitra's border with Daraa on Tuesday morning. The civilians had reportedly been taking shelter in a large building in Ain al-Tina.
"They were all displaced from other areas. They included five children and three women," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.
It was not immediately clear whether the strikes were carried out by the regime or its Russian ally, the Britannia-based monitor said. The monitor determines who carried out strikes based on the type of aircraft and munitions used, locations and flight patterns.
In the west of the adjacent province of Daraa, Russian air raids also killed one civilian near the village of al-Aliya, the Observatory said.
"Since Tuesday morning, heavy Russian air strikes and barrel bombs dropped by the regime have been targeting an area straddling Quneitra and Daraa," Abdel Rahman said.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham , a group led by Syria's former al-Qaeda affiliate, is present in that area, he said. HTS jihadists are not included in a ceasefire between regime and rebels in Daraa announced earlier this month, which has allowed the regime to retake control of more than 90 percent of the province.
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Supressor of the Damascenes... 's regime has advanced in Daraa thanks to a deadly bombardment campaign since June 19, along with Russia-brokered deals between opposition fighters and the regime.
In Quneitra on Monday, rebels in at least five towns raised the national flag, seeking a similar agreement with the regime, Abdel Rahman said.
"Rebel factions in these towns have stopped fighting to avoid bombardment and destruction," he said.
In two days since Sunday, at least 43 regime fighters have been killed in both Daraa and Quneitra, while 48 jihadists and rebels have bit the dust, the Observatory said.
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[TheGuardian] In the eyes of its members, there is no more important cultural institution in the world than the Swedish Academy. The members, who call themselves The Eighteen (always in capitals), are elected for life by their peers, and meet for a ritual dinner every Thursday evening at a restaurant they own in the heart of the old town in Stockholm. And once a year, at a ceremony brilliant with jewels and formality, the permanent secretary of the academy hands out the Nobel prize in literature and all the world applauds. So much elites congratulating other elites it makes me want to vomit.
But this year there will be no prize and no ceremony. In November 2017, it was revealed in the Swedish press that the husband of one of the academy members had been accused of serial sexual abuse, in assaults alleged to have taken place over more than 20 years. Jean-Claude Arnault, a French photographer and cultural entrepreneur, is married to the poet and academician Katarina Frostenson. In addition to assault accusations against him, the pair are accused of misusing academy funding. Arnault has denied all accusations, and Frostenson has refused to comment. So, so satisfying to see these pricks taken down a notch.
The academy is paralysed by the scandal, which was followed by a slew of resignations and expulsions. Six of The Eighteen have withdrawn from any part in its deliberations; another two were compelled to do so. The statutes say that 12 members must be present to elect any new ones, so with only 10, no important decisions can be taken and no new members elected. The vacuum has been filled with invective.
One hopes the invective was extraordinarily inventive in a thoroughly literary/poetic style...
"It was a loud and stormy discussion..."
Click through to revel in the joy of red on red.
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#1
I want to know who is in charge of colors.
Red used to mean Commies; now it means republicans...except when it doesn't.
Blue used to be republicans but now it means democrats...except when it's war games when it means the good guys.
#2
They switched the coloring for parties in the 60s because the Legacy Infotainment Enterprises feared Americans would make the connection of communist with the Democratic Party. Of course, now that they've actually declared themselves communists, they can always switch it back.
[PRESSTV] The International Court of Justice has confirmed Iran's filling of a lawsuit against the United States over its re-imposing sanctions against the Islamic Theocratic Republic.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) made the confirmation on Tuesday, one day after Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif announced that it had been requested.
Following the ICJ's announcement, a State Department official claimed that the lawsuit was meritless and that Washington would attempt to counter it in court.
"While we cannot comment on the specifics, Iran's application is baseless and we intend to vigorously defend the United States before the ICJ," said a State Department spokesperson on condition of anonymity.
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Aleppo (Syria News) The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) launched new attacks against the Free Syrian Army ... the more palatable version of the Syrian insurgency, heavily influenced by the Moslem Brüderbund... and Ottoman Turkish troops in Afrin area, in the countryside of Aleppo.
In a press statement released by the media office of the YPG, the Kurdish militia revealed the details of offensives carried out in Afrin in the second week of July.
The offensives started when the PG troops planted a landmine on a military road used by the Free Syrian Army and Ottoman Turkish troops in Basela Village, killing 8 Ottoman Turkish soldiers and wounding two others.
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Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
[DAWN] Police in Sialkot and Daska registered cases against at least 198 PML-N workers on Tuesday after they took out a rally to welcome convicted former premier Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf, then by the courts... and his daughter Maryam Nawaz upon their return from London on July 13.
Sialkot Saddar police booked 175 PML-N workers under Sections 188, 290 and 291 of the Pakistain Penal Code (PPC) on the basis of a report filed by Sub-Inspector Maqsood Ahmed.
Meanwhile, ...back at the the conspirators' cleverly concealed hideout the long-awaited message arrived. They quickly got to work with their decoder rings... the Daska Saddar police registered cases against 23 PML-N workers, including Rana Raza, Hashim Butt, and Naeem Butt, the PML-N general secretary in Daska. These men have also been booked for taking out a rally on the Daska-Sialkot Road.
Police said that the booked PML-N workers indulged in hate speech against law enforcement agencies when they were halted by them in a bid to maintain the law and order situation there.
No arrests have been made with respect to either of these FIRs, but an investigation into the matter is underway.
The Rangpura police separately started the paperwork but haven't done much else against five suspects, including two local Pakistain Tehrik-e-Insaf ...a political party in Pakistan. PTI was founded by former Pakistani cricket captain and philanthropist Imran Khan. The party's slogan is Justice, Humanity and Self Esteem, each of which is open to widely divergent interpretations.... (PTI) leaders Mehar Kashif and Sheikh Kamran for the use of fireworks at Sialkot's Jinnah Stadium upon the arrival of PTI Chairman Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who is the lightweight's lightweight... , who was there to address a public meeting on the night of July 15.
A case was registered under Sections 188, 285 and 286 of the PPC on the report of Assistant Sub Inspector Sarwar Ali Mudassar. Police said that the display of fireworks was in violation of the official ban imposed by the Punjab 1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots.... government. The case is being investigated.
Separately, a Lahore sessions court asked police to submit a report on August 7 regarding their lack of response to a request for the registration of a case against PML-N Chairman Shahbaz Sharif ...Pak dynastic politician, brother of PM Nawaz Sharif, chief minister of Punjab... and other leaders. According to the applicant, he tried to register a case against Sharif and other PML-n leaders for their remarks against the caretaker setup.
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[PRESSTV] Tajikistan and Russia have commenced joint military exercises near the Tajik-Afghan border in a bid to boost the Central Asian country’s readiness in warding off potential attacks by the Afghanistan-based Taliban ...Arabic for students... holy warrior group.
Tajikistan's Defense Ministry in a statement announced the news on Tuesday, saying that more than 10,000 soldiers, mostly Tajik reservists, had participated in the first such drills in Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region.
Combined troops will practice "eliminating bully boyz who broke through" from Afghanistan in an imagined incursion, the statement added.
Meanwhile, ...back at the pond, the enormous newt was trying to decide if Gloria was edible... the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation said in a statement that some 400 troopers and 80 pieces of Russian military equipment were deployed from a military base in Tajikistan for the drills, which are scheduled to be concluded on Friday.
The two countries have intensified military cooperation since US-led forces began pulling out troops from Afghanistan in large numbers in 2014. The ex-Soviet allies also held similar drills in March 2016.
This is the first time that Dushanbe has held such military drills in the sometimes restive Gorno-Badakhshan, where festivities between government troops and rebel forces broke out some six years ago. Previous exercises had been held in the country's southern province of Khatlon.
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#1
December 09, 2010
Russian border guards are up for returning to the Tajik-Afghan border if Tajikistan were to ask them to come back. According to Maksim Peshkov, director of the CIS department at the Russian Foreign Ministry and Russia's ex-ambassador to Tajikistan, the return of the Russian Border Guards Service to safeguard Tajikistan's southern borders has been discussed between the two countries' authorities.
Russian border guards were stationed alongside the Tajik border until 2006, when the task of guarding the border was handed over to their Tajik counterparts. A small group of Russian experts still remain there as consultants to the Tajik border services. Tajikistan shares a 1,200 kilometer border with Afghanistan, which is considered a major transit route for Afghan opium to Central Asia, and on to Russia and Europe.
[AlAhram] Egyptian authorities said on Tuesday that the Rafah border crossing with the Gazoo Strip is still open in both directions to stranded travellers and humanitarian cases, despite a technical failure in the crossing’s communication system.
Authorities dismissed media reports on Tuesday that the crossing was closed.
Until it was closed on Monday, the crossing, the only pedestrian passageway between Egypt and Gazoo, had largely been open since late May.
The Paleostinian ambassador in Cairo, Diab al-Louh said the crossing has been facing technical issues related to its communications systems over the past two days.
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Cameroon ...a long, narrow country that fills the space between Nigeria and Chad on the northeast, CAR to the southeast. Prior to incursions by Boko Haram nothing ever happened there... ians fleeing an increasingly bloody separatist conflict have received little aid as humanitarian agencies struggle to access the area, the United Nations ...an organization originally established to war on dictatorships which was promptly infiltrated by dictatorships and is now held in thrall to dictatorships... said.
More than 200,000 people have fled their homes in the volatile western regions since late last year, in addition to at least 21,000 who have fled into Nigeria, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Tuesday.
The regions have been gripped by violence since protests by the mainly Frenchie-loving country's Anglophone minority morphed into a secessionist movement last year.
There were no humanitarian agencies in the area before the insurgency, and bad roads, travel restrictions and unpredictable attacks have made it difficult for them to go in, said Modibo Traore, the head of OCHA in Cameroon.
Most of the people who have fled festivities are hiding in the woods, he said. Some have bullet wounds but are afraid to venture into urban areas for medical care.
"The people living in the forest are asking for more assistance, saying that conditions are very difficult," Traore told the Rooters Thomson Foundation.
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Salahuddin (Iraqinews.com) ‐ Four Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (IS) forces of Evil were killed Tuesday during a military operation in Salauddin province, the Iraqi Security Media Center announced.
"Security forces, backed by Iraqi warplanes, managed to kill four members of Islamic State within the framework of the Martyrs’ Revenge Operation recently announced by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi," Iraqi website Alforatnews quoted the center as saying in a statement Tuesday.
The troops also destroyed an Islamic State hotbed in the operation, the statement read.
Meanwhile, ...back at the pie fight, Bella grabbed the cocoanut cream... another security source said that a laboratory used by IS forces of Evil for making bombs was destroyed on the outskirts of Mtaibijh area between Diyala and Salahuddin.
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[Al Jazeera] At least 289 civilians have been killed in intercommunal violence in Mali this year, according to the United Nations ...an organization originally established to war on dictatorships which was promptly infiltrated by dictatorships and is now held in thrall to dictatorships... human rights ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty... office.
More than 75 percent of the incidents occurred in the country's central Mopti region, Rupert Colville, UN human rights front man, said on Tuesday.
He added that the non-combatants were killed in 99 incidents of communal violence since the start of the year, with more than half of the killings taking place after May 1.
"MINUSMA has documented ... an escalation of attacks allegedly carried out by Dozos (traditional hunters) and elements of Dogon militias against villages or parts of villages occupied primarily by members of the Fulani community," Colville said.
Dozos, also known as Donzos, have been enmeshed in a long-running conflict with Fulani herders over land, grazing grounds and water rights.
Earlier this month, Dogon fighters allegedly killed 16 Fulani civilians during a raid on a village, with some reportedly shot inside the local mosque and others burned alive in their houses, Colville said.
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#1
long-running conflict with Fulani herders over land, grazing grounds and water rights.
Seems like some stuff that happened in the old west circa 1880's.
[DAWN] Dozens of people from different civil society organizations on Monday staged a demonstration outside the Election Commission of Pakistain’s office protesting against its decision of allowing banned outfits to contest polls with difference names.
Mohammad Ali, Khalid Rao, Asad Zaidi, Waleed Mehmood Sheikh and Asad Gokal leading the protest said removing proscribed persons’ names from the Fourth Schedule just 21 days before the election and lifting the ban on terrorist outfits raised many eyebrows.
They added that the banned ...the word banned seems to have a different meaning in Pakistain than it does in most other places. Or maybe it simply lacks any meaning at all...
organizations were involved in several killings and other criminal activities.
The protestors were carrying placards inscribed with the hate remarks made by the banned organizations and their leaders.
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The poll workers find it distressing
But toss in the towel, acquiescing:
"Though smelling of salad,
That ballot is valid!"
She votes in chipotle ranch dressing.
[Al Jazeera] Syrian government troops have regained control of a strategic hill overlooking the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, state-media and rebels said on Monday.
Troops loyal to Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Despoiler of Deraa... took control of the al-Haara hill on the second day of an offensive aimed at retaking the remaining pockets of opposition in Quneitra province along the border with Israel.
The hilltop, which is the highest ground in Deraa province, fell into rebel hands in October 2014, was heavily bombed by Russian and Syrian army air raids over the past two days.
The violence is taking place a few kilometres away from the line marking the start of the United Nations ...an organization which on balance has done more bad than good, with the good not done well and the bad done thoroughly... Disengagement Observer Force zone, an area monitored by a UN force since 1974 in the wake of the Arab-Israeli War.
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[DAWN] Iran is ready to boost its uranium enrichment to higher levels if talks fail with Europe ...also known as Moslem Lebensraum... on salvaging the nuclear deal, a top official said on Tuesday.
"We have of course adopted some measures in order to prepare the ground for eventually increasing the level of enrichment if it is needed and if the negotiations with the Europeans fail," Behrouz Kamalvandi, front man and vice-president of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, told a news conference in Tehran.
"We are of course continuing to carry out and implement our obligations based on the JCPOA," he said, referring to the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers that put strict limits on its atomic programme in return for sanctions relief.
"But at the same time, taking every scenario into consideration, we are preparing ourselves," he added. The United States announced in May that it was abandoning the 2015 agreement and reimposing nuclear-related sanctions, threatening global companies with heavy penalties if they continue to operate in Iran.
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[DAWN] Saudia Arabia says it has executed five men, including two Saudis, convicted for the robbery and murder of a Pak warehouse guard in the western city of Jeddah.
The Interior Ministry said the five men, two Saudis and three Chad nationals, stabbed and beat the guard and stole his cellphone as part of a robbery of the warehouse.
It is not clear when they committed the crime and how they were executed Tuesday, but Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... usually carries out death sentences with public beheadings by sword or firing squad.
The country has executed 64 people so far in 2018. In 2017, 122 people were executed and 144 people were executed in 2016.
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#1
including two Saudis
Goodness. The times, they are a-changing. In the old days, the dead Pakistani would have been found guilty instead, because had he not been in the country, the Saudis would not have been able to rob and kill him.
[DAWN] Indian police said Tuesday that 17 men have been tossed in the slammer Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! for allegedly raping an 11-year-old girl over several weeks, in the country's latest horrific sexual assault case.
The girl, who has a hearing disability, was allegedly sexually assaulted inside a largely unoccupied apartment block in the southern city of Chennai.
Among those arrested were the 300-flat building's security guards, plumber and elevator operator, state police said.
The 66-year-old lift operator was the first to attack the girl after she returned from school and was cycling around the complex, police said.
He allegedly invited other men who filmed each other raping the child. As the ordeal progressed she was sedated with injections and drug-laced soft drinks, reports said.
"This is the initial stage of investigation and we have to go in-depth to ascertain the details," a local police official told AFP.
According to local reports, the accused took the girl to various places in the complex including the basement, terrace, gym and public restrooms to rape her.
The incident came to light after the girl told her family who then lodged a police complaint. She is now receiving medical attention.
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[DAWN] The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Tuesday put off appeals by Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf, then by the courts... , Maryam Nawaz and Capt Mohammad Safdar against their conviction in the Avenfiled reference until after the elections.
The court was hearing seven separate appeals filed by the three convicts' lawyers ─ against the conviction, suspension of their sentences, and transfer of the pending two references against Sharif family members. Three appeals were filed on behalf of Nawaz, and two each on behalf of Maryam and Safdar.
The IHC bench, comprising Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani ... four star general, Chief of Army Staff of the Mighty Pak Army. Kayani was the former Director General of ISI... and Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb, observed that since the high court administration had not notified the division bench for next week, the appeals against the convictions of Nawaz, Maryam and retired Capt Safdar were adjourned until the last week of July.
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[DAWN] The Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... stormed a police checkpoint in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar The unfortunate Afghan province located adjacent to Mohmand, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. The capital is Jalalabad. The province was the fief of Younus Khalis after the Soviets departed and one of his sons is the current provincial Taliban commander. Nangarhar is Haqqani country.. province and killed seven coppers, a provincial official said on Monday.
The attack took place the previous night in the district of Ghani Kahil, said the provincial police chief, Ghulam Sanayee Stanikzai. Five Taliban fighters were killed in the attack, he said.
Stanikzai also said that in Khogyani district, also in Nangarhar province, a government air strike on Sunday night left 20 Taliban fighters dead.
There was no statement from the Taliban on either the Ghani Kahil attack or the air strike.
Earlier on Sunday, a jacket wallah on foot struck outside the building of the Rural Rehabilitation and Development Ministry in the capital, Kabul, killing seven people and wounding 15.
The murderous MoslemIslamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group grabbed credit for the attack in a statement Monday on its Aamaq news agency, saying it targeted babus government employees and warning their attacks will reach "all who help the Crusaders," a term faceless myrmidons use to refer to foreign forces.
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The Middle East situation on the ground is significantly different in comparison to a short while ago. There were times when Iran sought to become the leading hegemon in the region.
With Tehran’s honeymoon coming to an end after eight years of Obama at the helm in Washington, the regime is finding itself severely marginalized. There are also analysts saying the days of Iran’s holy mans in power are numbered, especially with protests spreading throughout the country.
[KhaamaPress] The Taliban militants have said they are waiting to receive a formal offer from the United States for direct talks to find a solution to the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan.
The group also shared a demand ahead of the talks with the United States, saying "We want names of our leaders removed from the United Nations sanctions list as a confidence building measure ahead of the talks," according to Daily Times.
"We will start official talks with the US about the withdrawal of foreign forces and their concerns," the Taliban representative told the Pakistan-based paper.
"We want direct negotiations with the US to find out a solution to the problem. We want talks on the withdrawal of the foreign troops first and then we will work for peace," he further said.
This comes as reports emerged on Monday suggesting that the Administration of President Donald Trump has reportedly ordered its top diplomat to seek direct talks with the Taliban group in Afghanistan in a bid to help kick start Afghan negotiations.
Sources privy of the development in U.S. and Afghanistan have told The New York Times that the Trump administration is considering a strategy shift to help the launch of a broader, formal negotiations to end the long war.
No date has been set for the likely talks between the US and the Taliban group with the US State Department and the Taliban yet to formally comment regarding the latest developments.
[KhaamaPress] The NATO-led Resolute Mission has rejected remarks attributed to US Forces and Resolute Support Mission Commander General John Nicholson regarding the direct US talks with the Taliban group.
"The United States is not a substitute for the Afghan people or the Afghan government," said U.S. Army Gen. John Nicholson, Resolute Support commander.
He said "My reaffirmation of Secretary Pompeo's statement in which he said peace talks would include a discussion of international forces and that the United States is ready to work with the Taliban, the Afghan government and the Afghan people towards lasting peace was mischaracterized."
According to Resolute Support Mission, the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued his statement, June 16, days after the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan's unilateral cease-fire with the Taliban was announced by H.E. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and began, June 12.
"As President Ghani emphasized in his statement to the Afghan people, peace talks by necessity would include a discussion of the role of international actors and forces," said Pompeo in his statement. "The United States is prepared to support, facilitate, and participate in these discussions."
"The U.S. is exploring all avenues to advance a peace process in close consultation with the Afghan government," said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Martin L. O'Donnell, Resolute Support spokesman. "But this remains an Afghan-led process."
#1
There will be talks. The Tribes do not want you running them and the Religious Clerics are Horrified at you. This Brutality serves no purpose and we all know this is run through Pakistan too.
Aghans are decent people and you have rotted them with this constant surge of hate, fear, dogma, and horrible governorship.
I Pray you listen to the Village Chieftains from now on. Or I may sick something upon you more horrible than you could ever fathom in the realm of possibility with the Wrath of GOD.
You, Taliban, are not the boss of Afghanistan.
Start there. Or die.
#2
The group also shared a demand ahead of the talks with the United States, saying "We want names of our leaders removed from the United Nations sanctions list as a confidence building measure ahead of the talks," according to Daily Times.
Ummmm...NO
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/18/2018 14:17
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#3
as a confidence building measure ahead of the talks, Mattis DRONE STRIKES!
I disagree with this blanket statement. There may be decent Afghans but liberated Afghanistan is a hostile and evil entity because the Afghan people's mainstream opinion wants it to be.
Supporting Afghanistan may be expedient for reasons of realpolitik, but it is not a moral cause.
Talking to the Taliban is even worse, because it further undermines what is left of Western and US deterrence.
[Al Jazeera] India's highest court has asked the government to enact a new law to deal with an increase in mob violence and lynchings that have reportedly killed more than two dozen of people in the country this year.
The Supreme Court in the capital, New Delhi, on Tuesday, recommended that Parliament create a new penal provision to punish the offenders and stem the mob-related violence.
"Horrendous acts of mobocracy cannot be allowed to become a new norm," a three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, said. "It has to be curbed with an iron hand."
"No citizen can take law into his hands or become a law onto himself," the court ruled.
The top court was hearing a number of petitions seeking direction on checking mob violence by Hindu cow-protection vigilantes targeting Moslems over suspicions of beef consumption and cattle slaughter.
So far this year, there have been 13 incidents of mob lynchings, resulting in the deaths of 27 people, according to the Times of India, often in isolated areas where outsiders have been accused of child kidnapping and other crimes following fake rumours spread via WhatsApp, a messaging application.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/18/2018
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#1
Maybe if you gave them swift and sure justice, these things might be abated.
[DAWN] Suspected fighters from the Lion of IslamIslamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (IS) group attacked Talibs attending a funeral in northern Afghanistan on Tuesday and killed at least 15 in the latest violence between the rival groups, officials said.
Another five Taliban ...Arabic for students... were maimed in the attack on a house in Sayad district in Sari Pul province, the provincial police chief Abdul Qayum Baqizoi told AFP. A Taliban Überstürmbannführer was among the dead, Baqizoi added.
The attackers, who were armed with guns and grenades, fled the area.
The Sari Pul governor's front man Zabiullah Amani confirmed the corpse count.
"ISIS and Taliban have been fighting each other for more than two months in (neighbouring) Jowzjan and Sari Pul, killing hundreds on both sides," Amani said, using the Arabic acronym for IS.
The Taliban has not commented on the attack. IS did not immediately claim responsibility.
IS first emerged in Afghanistan in 2014, overrunning large parts of the eastern provinces of Nangarhar The unfortunate Afghan province located adjacent to Mohmand, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. The capital is Jalalabad. The province was the fief of Younus Khalis after the Soviets departed and one of his sons is the current provincial Taliban commander. Nangarhar is Haqqani country.. and Kunar near the border with Pakistain, where it engaged in a pie fight with the Taliban.
A front man for the 209th Shaheen Corps of the Afghan military in the North Mohammad Hanif Rezaye said a number of Talibs had participated in the funeral ceremony of a Taliban leader Shir Mohammad Ghazanfar when a ISIS jacket wallah detonated his explosives.
He said the Taliban leader was killed during the festivities with the ISIS bandidosDeath Eaters on Monday and one of his brothers was also killed in today’s attack.
According to Rezayee, at least fifteen bandidosDeath Eaters were killed in the attack and at least three others have sustaiend injuries. However, you can observe a lot just by watching... a front man for the provincial government said at least fifteen bandidosDeath Eaters were killed and at least five others were maimed in the attack. In the meantime, a source in the provincial security commandment, said at least twenty two people were killed in the attack.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[Al Jazeera] Iraqi security forces have used batons and rubber hoses to disperse hundreds of protesters who gathered near an oilfield in the flashpoint province of Basra, as anger mounts over the government's failure to address crumbling infrastructure and a lack of basic services.
Local officials said production had not been affected at the giant Zubair oilfield near Basra, with police vowing to use "necessary measures to keep protesters away from the fields".
Iraqis have vented their anger at several major oilf ields since the demonstrations began nine days ago, and stormed government buildings, branches of political parties and powerful Shia militias.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/18/2018
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Top|| File under: Govt of Iraq
[Townhall] Amid CNN’s blitz of savage anti-Trump coverage following Monday’s Helsinki summit, CNN counterterrorism analyst Philip Mudd, a former top analyst at the CIA and the FBI National Security Branch’s first Deputy Director, called on a "shadow government" to openly oppose the Trump administration.
Mudd, who was appointed to his position at the FBI by the bureau’s then-Director Robert Mueller, made these comments in response to a question from CNN anchor Anderson Cooper about whether Mudd agreed with Senator McCain’s assessment that Trump’s performance in Helsinki was the "most disgraceful display...by an American president on the world stage." Mudd replied at length [transcript from NewsBusters; emphasis mine]:
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
07/18/2018 5:01
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#4
Next he'll want the trial conducted deep underground in a secret star-shaped chamber in total secrecy and a jury personally appointed by himself - to make sure it's impartial of course...
#7
Just chop those GS-13 and above to 'you sit at the convenience of the President'. The GS-4s through GS-12 don't have to get their skivvies in a bunch.
BTW, has anyone seen a permanent GS-1 or GS-2 anywhere?
#8
President Donald Trump signed three executive orders designed to enforce merit-system principals in the civil service and to improve efficiency, transparency, and accountability in the federal government. According to reports, the executive orders are expected to make civil service more accountable and are supposed to benefit taxpayers and federal workers alike.
I guess fed employees don't want efficiency, accountability and transparency?
[Real Clear Politics] NYU Russia expert Stephen F. Cohen and FNC's Tucker Carlson discuss the president's meeting Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and calls of "treason" from Democrats and Intel officials.
TUCKER CARLSON, FNC: Assess, if you would, the reaction today to this press conference and to the summit between Putin and Trump/
STEPHEN F. COHEN: The reaction by most of the media, by the Democrats, by the anti-Trump people is like mob violence. I've never seen anything like it in my life.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
07/18/2018 8:08
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#2
Why do so many people in charge now dislike the current leader of Russia more than they disliked the communists?
Because the current leader is NOT a communist and they love communists which they saw (and still see) as the harbinger of their socialist, globalist utopia.
The elites are all looking for the system that will provide them with their Dacha on the Don.
Bernie has two. It's the sign of belonging to the right class so they can't deny it.
[DAWN] A liberal woman of colour with zero name recognition and little funding takes down a powerful, long serving congressman from her own political party.
When Tahirah Amatul-Wadud heard about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning upset over US Representative Joe Crowley in New York’s Democratic primary last month, the first-time candidate saw parallels with her own long-shot campaign for Congress in western Massachusetts.
The 44-year-old Moslem, African-American civil rights lawyer, who is taking on a 30-year congressman and ranking Democrat on the influential House Boodle Central, says she wasn’t alone, as encouragement, volunteers and donations started pouring in. "We could barely stay on top of the residual love," says Amatul-Wadud, US Representative Richard Neal’s lone challenger in the state’s Sept 4 Democratic primary. "It sent a message to all of our volunteers, voters and supporters that winning is very possible."
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
07/18/2018
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#1
Jeff Flake endorses the unctuous Deeda Aboud. Yeah, that's about right.
[PRESSTV] Former US President Barrack Obama decries ’utter loss of shame in politicians in an apparent jab at his successor Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... He made the comments while delivering the 2018 Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Tuesday a day after Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin ...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances... , held a summit in the Finnish capital Helsinki. Then his lips fell off.
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[Khaama Press] At least 28 anti-government armed gunnies were killed in separate Arclight airstrikes conducted by the Afghan and US forces in southern Helmand ...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan... and Kandahar provinces.
A front man for the Kandahar Police Commandment Zia Durani said at least twelve gunnies were killed in a airstrike conducted by the foreign forces in this province.
He said a vehicle of the anti-government armed gunnies was targeted in the vicinity of Maruf district and as a result a commander of the gunnies has also sustained critical injuries.
In the meantime, the provincial governor of southern Helmand province, Mohammad Yasin Khan, said at least sixteen gunnies were killed during the airstrikes conducted by the Afghan forces in this province.
Yasin Khan further added that the airstrikes were conducted in Greshk and Marjah districts as well as Lashkargah city, the bustling provincial capital of Helmand.
According to Yasin Khan, at least seven commanders of the anti-government armed gunnies were among those killed.
The anti-government armed gunnies including Talibs have not commented regarding the report so far.
[Khaama Press] The Commando Forces of the Afghan National Army (ANA) have rescued at least 58 people from a Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... prison in southern Helmand ...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan... province of Afghanistan.
The Ministry of Defense in a statement said the prisoners were rescued during an operation conducted late on Monday night in the vicinity of Musa Qala district.
The statement further added that a number of security personnel and doctors were among those released.
According to MoD, at least four army soldiers, fifteen police soldiers, and two doctors and several civilians were rescued during the operation.
At least four suspected murderous Moslems were also incarcerated Please don't kill me! by the Afghan Commando Forces during the operation, the Ministry of Defense added.
The anti-government armed Lion of Islam groups including Talibs have not commented regarding the report so far.
This is not the first time the Afghan forces conducting special operations against the hideouts of the Talibs which are used as prison cells.
At least seven civilians were rescued during a similar operation conducted in the vicinity of Charchino district of Uruzgan province nearly ten days ago.
[Khaama Press] The Afghan officials expressed concerns regarding the growing rate of population in Afghanistan while celebrating the World Population Day 2018.
Afghanistan’s Minister of Economy Mustafa Mastoor said the population growth rate has been recorded at 2.14 per cent.
Mastoor further added that the growth rate is a matter of concern for a country like Afghanistan which has less economic growth rate as compared to its population growth rate.
In the meantime, Mastoor said the Ministry of Economy is working on a plan for the better management of population in Afghanistan.
The head of the Central Statistics Organization Habibullah Mohid warned that the country could face major problems due to the unjustified management of the population growth.
According to Mohid, the developed countries face the issues of declining population growth rate while the developing countries face the issues of the increasing population growth rate.
On the other hand, the deputy public health minister Dr. Ahmad Jan Naeem said the growing population will have negative effects on the environment, education, health, and social opportunities.
Dr. Naeem said the ministry of public health will introduce modern methods for family planning until 2020.
[AlAhram] A number of armed Syrian opposition factions in the coastal region of Syria have signed on Monday evening a cease-fire agreement in Cairo under the sponsorship of the Egyptian General Intelligence, guranteed by the Federal Republic of Russia, and by Sheikh Ahmed al-Jarba, the head of the Syrian Tayyar al-Al-Ghad current.
The deal included an agreement on participation in efforts to combat terrorism, and working towards reaching a political settlement to the Syrian crisis, the return of refugees and displaced to their residences, and the releasing of detainees.
Other Syrian armed factions in the North Homs country side, including Gaish al-Tawhid, have also signed an agreement under the sponsorship of Egypt, guaranteed by Russia and through the mediation of Sheikh Ahmed al-Jarba to join the efforts to combat terrorism in Syria and found a peace and security force in the area.
The leaders of the Syrian factions, which signed the agreement in the meetings in Cairo, thanked the Egyptian President's Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi for the efforts Egypt is exerting to resolve the Syrian crisis and alleviate the humanitarian suffering of the Syrian people.
The front man of the Syrian Ghad Current, Munzir Akbik, said in statements to journalists that the Cairo agreement concerning the countryside of Homs deals with residents' concerns about the Syrian regime’s intervention in those areas, and the fears that the displaced would be returned but without the young men who were conscripted by the regime.
The agreement states that a security force will be established of 1,000 personnel, mainly from Gaish al-Tawhid members, to maintain security in the Homs countryside, and this guarantee the young men will return to the area to complete their military service there.
Akbik cited serious moves from the Russian side, who pledged to communicate with Bashir al-Assad’s regime to prevent any intervention, in addition to guaranteeing the safe return of displaced people to their villages and cities.
Regarding the other agreement involving the coastal region, Akbik stated that the ceasefire deal included the first coastal division faction, which pledged to halt its exchange of fire with regime forces and join counter-terrorism efforts against al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorists.
[IsraelTimes] 22 pro-Assad fighters, including 9 Iranians, said killed in Sunday bombing of the Aleppo airfield, an alleged HQ of Tehran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Satellite images released by an Israeli intelligence firm on Tuesday showed the extensive damage done to at least one building, in a deadly Arclight airstrike on a Syrian airfield earlier this week that was blamed on Israel.
The bombing raid targeted al-Nayrab airbase, adjacent to Aleppo’s international airport, in northern Syria late Sunday night, according to Syrian state media. The facility was identified in the past as a base for Iranian forces, including Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The satellite images released on Tuesday by ImageSat International, a company that interprets visual intelligence, show the effects of the airstrike to one structure near the airfield.
The building, described as a vehicle workshop, was estimated to be 50 meters by 12 meters (164 feet by 39 feet) in size.
The building was also said to have received shipments from Iranian transport aircraft, flying into the Aleppo airfield.
According to the Observatory, the airfield that was targeted served as a logistics hub to provide equipment and food to pro-regime forces fighting at nearby fronts, but it was not believed to store weapons.
The Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside the country, said it had recorded a wave of blasts around Nayrab on Sunday night.
The base was also reportedly previously struck by Israel on April 29 as part of a large raid that also targeted weapons depots near Hama.
There was no comment from Israel, which rarely confirms such attacks.
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07/18/2018
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[Al Jazeera] Proactiva Open Arms, which has been rescuing refugees crossing the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa to Europe, says the Libyan coastguard has left at least two refugees to die after abandoning them at sea.
The Spanish NGO, which carries out search and rescue operations in Mediterranean, posted a video and pictures on Twitter showing how their boat took aboard three people; two women and a child.
By the time the three were found by Proactiva, one woman and the child had already died.
According to tweets by Oscar Camps, founder and director of Proactiva, the boat was damaged and abandoned by the Libyan coastguard.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/18/2018
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[IsraelTimes] GOSHAWK, developed by Beersheba-based RoboTiCan, identifies and neutralizes airborne incendiary threats without need for human input
The Israeli military has begun using an autonomous drone system to counter the threat of incendiary kites and balloons in the Gazoo Strip, Hadashot news reported Tuesday.
The GOSHAWK system, developed by Beersheba-based RoboTiCan, uses optic sensors to identify the launch of airborne arson devices, then launches another drone to intercept the threat and neutralize it ‐ a process the system handles from start to finish without any human input.
The system has been deployed in the field in recent weeks and has seen some success.
RoboTiCan CEO Hagai Balshai told Hadashot the system was orginally developed to counter potential threats by drones, but has now been converted to deal with the arson problem.
On Tuesday, incendiary balloons from Gazoo landed in a preschool yard in an Israeli community, near the border as children played outside, and in an elementary school closed for summer vacation in another community. There were no injuries.
In total, 17 fires were sparked by arson devices flown from Gazoo in the course of Tuesday.
The army says hundreds of incendiary devices have been brought down through the use of drones ‐ though most have been operated by human handlers.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/18/2018
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Top|| File under: Hamas
#1
Mmm, autonomous flying killbots. That would be a fun project to work on.
#3
Kites and balloons can be in nearly infinite variations and materials. The terrorists launching them are a finite resource. Eliminate them
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/18/2018 11:09
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#4
The Israeli IDF already has a super-smelly non-lethal weapon in Skunk. Arm the drones with paintball guns , hand out controllers and make it into a tournament for the IDF drone operators. It is hard to be a super-cool jihadi after you have been "skunked".
#6
It should be tied into an autonomous counter-battery system, so that launching a kite earns you say, 8 155mm WP rounds in return. You get your fire and everyone is happy.
[AnNahar] Ottoman Turkish authorities have stopped registering "all but a handful" of newly-arrived Syrian refugees, depriving them of essential services and putting them at risk of deportation, Human Rights Watch said on Monday.
The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... is hosting some 3.5 million refugees from the Syrian civil war and its generosity since the conflict broke out in 2011 has won international praise. But there have been growing social tensions over their continued presence.
A Ottoman Turkish official contacted by AFP said in response to the HRW report that "we have always welcomed Syrians and we still welcome them", adding "people who are in Turkey have access to all the services they need."
HRW said that the suspension of registration -- a key step for newly-arrived refugees -- "is leading to unlawful deportations, coerced returns to Syria, and the denial of health care and education."
It described the suspension of registration as "Turkey's latest effort to deny new asylum seekers protection", adding that Turkey's border with Syria was now effectively "sealed-off."
The registration suspension applied to nine provinces on or near the Syrian border and Istanbul, it added.
HRW noted that since late August 2015 "only registered Syrians who obtain a special travel permit have been allowed to travel within Turkey."
Its associate refugee program director Gerry Simpson said that the EU, which was keen to limit the refugee flow to Europe, was "turning a blind eye to Turkey's latest steps to block and discourage people fleeing Syria."
Turkey meanwhile has been assisting refugees return to areas in northern Syria where the Ottoman Turkish army and allied Syrian rebels ousted Islamist turbans and Kurdish militias in military operations.
"We never deport to Syria", added the Ottoman Turkish official. "Some Syrians are choosing to go back to areas liberated by Turkey."
Posted by: Fred ||
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Top|| File under: Moslem Colonists
[AnNahar] Yemeni officials and witnesses say heavy fighting between pro-government forces and Iranian catspaws has killed more than 30 civilians, including women and kiddies, in the last two weeks.
Government forces have been trying to seize rebel-held areas along the western coast, while an allied Saudi-led coalition has been targeting the rebels, known as Houthis, with Arclight airstrikes.
Yemeni officials say fighting in the al-Tuhyta district, south of the key port city of Hodeida, has left 57 civilians maimed since the beginning of July. Many of them were maimed by land mines, they said.
The officials spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media. Witnesses spoke anonymously for fear of reprisals.
The coalition has been battling the Iran-allied Houthis since March 2015.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Top|| File under: Houthis
[DAWN] Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... returned late on Monday from his European tour to face ire in Washington, where US intelligence officials and senior Republicans were denouncing the president as "shameful" and "disgraceful" after he refused to challenge Russian leader Vladimir Putin ...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances... over interference in American elections.
Republican Senator John Maverick McCain ... the Senator-for-Life from Arizona, former presidential candidate and even more former foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution. As an ordinary citizen he greased the infamous hookers peeing on the Obamabed in Moscow dossier in an attempt to smear President Trump... said Trump's seeming acceptance of Putin's denial was a historical "low point" for the US presidency and the Helsinki summit between the two leaders a "tragic mistake."
"Today's presser in Helsinki was one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory. The damage inflicted by President Trump's naivete, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate," McCain said in a blistering statement.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
McCain's excuse is brain tumor, what's the rest of them have?
[BBC] Jim Chilton lives on a ranch - and one side of his property is along the US-Mexico border.
The Chiltons claim drug smugglers use their ranch as a route to the US. It's one of the reasons they support President Trump's promise to build a wall.
[AITONLINE.TV] The government insists intelligence at its disposal indicates that the Islamic terror 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... carried out attacks on riverine communities along the borderline between Adamawa and Taraba States.
Deputy Governor Martin Babale and the State Commissuoner for Information and strategy Ahmad Sajoh conveyed government's position on the recent killings that left over one hundred people dead and five thousand internally displaced persons, insisting that the killings were characterized by Boko Haram styled operations.
In the past one month, there have been what seems to be similar attacks in different communities, spanning about eight local government areas in the state, with high fatality figures.
But the Police Public Relations Officer Othman Abubakar discountenanced the State Government’s position saying the killing are as a result of the farmers/herders festivities and not Boko Haram related attacks.
The attacks sparked public outrage, as farming communities interpreted their ordeal as a strategic move by Fulani militia to stop them from engaging in this year's farming season.
Posted by: Fred ||
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The ninth? Really?
[Reason] Today the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a federal district count injunction against a California law to confiscate firearms magazines that hold over 10 rounds. The Ninth Circuit's 2-1 opinion is here, and the dissent is here. My analysis of the 2017 district court opinion is here.
Background: In 2016, California voters enacted an initiative that, among other things, dispossessed magazine owners of their property. Possession of firearms magazines over 10 rounds was forbidden. Current owners of magazines required to turm them over to the government, or to a gun store, or destroy the magazines, or move them out of state. The ban was to take effect on July 1, 2017.
In late June 2017, Federal District Judge Roger Benitez (S.D. Calif.) issued a preliminary injunction against the confiscation. He found that the plaintiffs had established a liklihood that they would succeed on the Second Amendment and Fifth Amendment claims (the latter involving taking of property without just compensation). The case is Duncan v. Becerra, since Xavier Becerra is Attorney General of California. The case is being litigated by Michel Associates, the leading firearms law firm in California.
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[SUNNEWSONLINE] The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), yesterday, reported that the disputed leader of Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... , Abubakar Shekau ... the lunatic leader of Boko Haram who has been reported dead at least eleven times, pledged his body and soul to ISIS, told his fighters to hang it up once or twice, and been fired by the Caliph and refused to step down ... , has said he is still in charge of the sect; despite a statement by so-called Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (IS) that he had been replaced.
Shekau denounced the IS declaration that Abu Musab al-Barnawi is now leader and accused al-Barnawi of trying to stage a coup against him.
In the last 18 months, Boko Haram has lost most of the territory it had controlled; after being pushed back by an offensive by the forces of Nigeria and its neighbours.
Boko Haram aligned itself with IS in March 2015.
Shekau was last heard from in an audio message last August, where he affirmed he was alive and had not been replaced-an IS video released in April said the same.
In a 10-minute audio message in Arabic and Hausa, Shekau appeared to distance Boko Haram from IS but still called its leader His Supreme Immensity, Caliph of the Faithful and Galactic Overlord, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ...the head of ISIS, or what remains of it, and a veteran of the Abu Graib jailhouse. Looks like a new messiah to bajillions of Moslems, like just another dead-eyed mass murder to the rest of us. So far he has been killed at least four times, though not yet by a stake through the heart... caliph.
The BBC did not state when the clip was recorded.
He said that some in Boko Haram had stopped him communicating with al-Baghdadi.
"I was asked to send my ideology in writing to the Caliph but it was manipulated by some people, in order to achieve their own selfish interests," he added, and described that move as a coup attempt against him.
Shekau, according to the BBC, said he had sent eight different letters to IS leaders but they did not act on them, only to hear the news that he had been replaced.
He then described al-Barnawi and his followers as polytheist. Boko Haram has split before but this is the most serious division to date.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/18/2018
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Top|| File under: Boko Haram (ISIS)
Two Donkeys jumped up on the stump,
Each shtupping the other one's rump,
And they bumped and they humped
And they thumped as they stumped,
So exciting the Trunks
And mass media monks
That their pompously preaching
And stomping and screeching
Soon summoned up Donald J. Trump.
[KhaamaPress] At least thirty seven faceless myrmidons were killed during the separate operations and Arclight airstrikes conducted in northern Faryab and Kunduz provinces of Afghanistan.
The 209th Shaheen Corps of the Afghan Military in the North said at least 14 faceless myrmidons were killed during the airstrikes in Char Dara and Dashti Archi districts of Kunduz province.
A statement by Shaheen Corps said at least four faceless myrmidons were also maimed and some of their weapons and munitions were destroyed during the same airstrikes.
In the meantime, Shaheen Corps said t least 16 faceless myrmidons were killed and 12 others were maimed during the clearance operations conducted in Garziwan district of Faryab province.
The Afghan Air Force also conducted airstrike in Khwajah Sabz Posh district of Faryab province leaving seven faceless myrmidons dead and another holy warriormaimed.
No further details were given regarding the casualties of the Afghan armed forces during the operations.
The anti-government armed holy warrior groups including Talibs have not commented regarding the report so far.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/18/2018
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[AnNahar] A deal was reached on Tuesday for the evacuation of two pro-regime towns in Syria, allowing thousands to leave after three years of encirclement by hardline rebels.
Fuaa and Kafraya are the last remaining towns under siege in Syria, where the medieval tactic was mostly made notorious by government forces in the seven-year war.
Surrounded and bombed by hostile factions, the Shiite-majority towns became both a rallying cry for the government and a playing card in callous rebel hands.
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Posted by: Fred ||
07/18/2018
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Top|| File under: al-Nusra
Baghdad (Iraqinews.com) – Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has called on security forces to protect citizens and property against different assaults as demonstrations over poor public services and corruption across southern Iraqi provinces entered their 10th day.
Speaking at a weekly press conference, Abadi was quoted by Alsumaria News as saying that he totally supports "the legitimate rights of protesters as long as their demonstrations are peaceful and far from violence."
He also called on Iraqi people to cooperate with the government to arrest corrupt people and those targeting the country's public security.
Mass demonstrations against unemployment, corruption and poor services spread further across southern Iraqi provinces, prompting Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to rush from a NATO summit in Brussels to Basra to meet with local officials and tribal leaders in a bid to restore calm.
The demonstrations started last week in Basra province, but they later extended to other cities, including Amara, Nasiriya, Karbala and the Shiite holy city of Najaf. There were also protests in parts of the capital, Baghdad.
Iraq was on the verge of forming a coalition government following the May 12 parliamentary election, which was marred by allegations of fraud.
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) The Iraqi government declared on Tuesday it adopted several measures to enhance services and secure jobs for angry Iraqis who launched a week of protests over poor services and joblessness.
A statement by the Iraqi cabinet's media said the cabinet ordered to made allocations from oil and border crossings toll revenues for the province of Basra, the epicenter of the recent wide-scale protests at southern regions.
According to the statement, the measures include increased water supply and acceleration of works at local water facilities.
Meanwhile, Basra provincial council member, Haider al-Saidi, told Almaalomah website that local police arrested 46 people who "infiltrated peaceful protests in the province", accusing them of "assaulting public property".
He explained, however, that 42 of "the saboteurs" will be released on bail.
Over the past week, Iraq's southern provinces have been swept by a wave of protests demanding enhanced services like cleaner water and uncut electricity, as well as priority appointment at oil fields. Demonstrators stormed airports and provincial councils as part of their demonstrations.
Iraqi health authorities said earlier today that clashes left eight demonstrators dead so far.
[AFRICANEWS] The government of Cameroon ...a long, narrow country that fills the space between Nigeria and Chad on the northeast, CAR to the southeast. Prior to incursions by Boko Haram nothing ever happened there... has opened an investigation into the authenticity of a video circulating on social media platforms which shows gunnies, presumed Cameroonian soldiers, executing two women and their children, accused of being accomplices of the Nigerian jihadist 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... In the video, published Tuesday and seen thousands of times on social networks, we see men wearing military uniforms similar to those of some units of the Cameroonian army executing two women and their two children, on their knees.
Shocking scenes
The two uniformed men are seen harrassing the women; slapping one of the women and saying ’You are going to die you BH’. BH in Cameroon refers to the Islamist group Boko Haram.
The video which looks like it was filmed on a mobile phone has someone commenting on the shocking scenes, explaining that the women were captured during an assault on Boko Haram.
The two women are led up a small hill, blindfolded, before all four are shot in the back. The cold blooded military men fire close to twenty bullets, including close-up shots on the corpses of the women and the littele children.
The videos have shocked the nation, including the authorities, who say an investigation has been opened to authenticate the video.
Government says its ’fake news’
Governmenet spokesperson Issa Tchiroma Bakary explained that since the Cameroonian army has been cited in the shocking video, government will investigate.
He was however quick to add that in this era of ’fake news’, they couldn’t rule out the possibility that enemies of the government could use such a ploy to frame the authorities.
’’We haven’t authenticated yet, but I draw your attention to what we call fake news. Do not be peremptory in the attribution of this video to the Cameroonian army. Because the enemy is always able to slip into our defence and security forces to attribute to us such heinous crimes,’’ Bakary said.
However, it's easy to be generous with someone else's money... two Cameroonian security sources told AFP that the video may have been filmed in a mountainous area in the Far North region of Cameroon, bordering some Nigerian strongholds in Boko Haram.
The Cameroonian army is engaged there to counter the frequent incursions of fighters of the jihadist group.
The broadcast of this very violent video provoked controversy and outrage on social networks.
A local NGO, the Network of Human Rights Defenders in Central Africa (Rhedac), claimed to have "cross-checked" the information contained in the video, claiming to be able to attest to its "authenticity".
Posted by: Fred ||
07/18/2018
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Top|| File under: Boko Haram (ISIS)
[IsraelTimes] IDF drills to conquer all of Gazoo, as Israel said to have warned Hamas, a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth", it is prepared to embark on campaign in Strip if arson kite launches don't cease by Friday
Israel’s politicianship has reportedly instructed the army to prepare for a military offensive in the Gazoo Strip, to be initiated if the launching of incendiary devices from the Hamas-run coastal enclave into Israeli territory continues.
According to a Channel 10 news report Tuesday, Israel has set Friday as a deadline for the flaming kite and balloon launches to cease. If this does not happen, Israel may decide it has no choice but to embark on a military campaign in the Strip, the report said.
Israel sent a similar message to Hamas through Egyptian intelligence, Channel 10 reported, with the Paleostinian terror group in turn indicating its forces will work to stop the launching of burning materials by Friday.
On Sunday, the IDF’s 162nd Armored Division launched an exercise simulating a war in the Gazoo Strip, including the capture of Gazoo City. While the military said it was planned in advance and was not related to the weekend’s exchange of fire, the manner in which the exercise was publicized by the military led many to see it as a tacit threat to Hamas.
Hamas is manning some 60 percent of its positions along the border fence in order to stop the launches, according to the TV report, and is expected to dispatch its forces to all of its posts by Friday.
Citing Paleostinian sources, the report said Hamas would only put a complete stop to the flaming kite launches if it can achieve some sort of accomplishment, such as the reopening of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. The Paleostinian Liberation Organization’s ambassador to Egypt said earlier Tuesday the crossing would reopen on Wednesday after being shuttered for more than 24 hours over technical issues.
[IsraelTimes] Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, reportedly tells Egypt it is unable to halt the fire balloons and kites but is working to reduce the number
Egypt has told Hamas that it must work to halt the practice of sending flying incendiary devices from Gazoo into Israel within a few days, according to a Tuesday report.
Cairo sent a message to Hamas saying that it had a few days to clamp down on the kites, balloons and other objects with flammable materials being flown over the border, according to the Ynet news site.
The report did not say when the message was sent and there was no immediate confirmation of its contents.
Hamas explained to the Egyptians that it is unable to stop the attacks but is working to reduce their number, according to the report.
"Hamas cannot stop the balloons in one go, because it will harm its status vis-a-vis the residents of the Gazoo Strip and those who support it in general, because it would be a capitulation, so therefore it must do so gradually," a source in Gazoo told Ynet.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/18/2018
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Top|| File under: Hamas
#1
They will never stop. Time to see what they have and haul some out of there.
You have a Green Light, but the decision is yours.
Just telling you, this will not stop.
Aside of taking it over again, which I know you do not want, this is a paws on operation.
[DAWN] Jamaat-e-Islami ...The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an independent branch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores... (JI) emir and central leader of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal Sirajul Haq ...current head of the Pak Jamaat-e-Islami. Siraj was born in 1962 and entered politics shortly after that... has said that people have been sending candidates of Pakistain Peoples Party to assemblies for several years and in return the party has given nothing to its poor and hapless supporters but poverty, hunger and unemployment.
Therefore, casting votes for PPP once again after such dismal performance was tantamount to feeding milk to a snake, said the JI emir at a big public meeting at Tikundi Bagh in Jacobabad on Monday. It was largely attended by workers of JI and Jamaat Ulema-e-Islam ...the political wing of the Pak Taliban... -Fazl (JUI-F).
Mr Haq said the PPP leaders regarded their voters as slaves but the slave had now awakened and he had started voicing frustration over police and government officials.
He said that it was impossible for a poor man to get something done in government offices without paying bribe and having recommendation of an influential person. He urged people to help MMA candidates Dr A.G. Ansari (NA-196), Haji Deedar Lashari (PS-1 Jacobabad) and Syed Shah Mohammad Shah (PS-2 Thull) to win election to end PPP’s "atrocities".
JI leaders Dr Mairajul Huda Siddiqi, Mumtaz Sahito, JUI-F’s Dr A.G. Ansari, Haji Deedar Lashari and others also spoke at the gathering.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/18/2018
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The coalition-backed Yemeni army has regained the first districts Hajjah after entering Abes on Tuesday.
The Head of the Guidance Division in the Fifth Military Region, Col. Mohammed Salem al-Khulani, said that the army was able to liberate the village of Habal, the first village of Abes district adjacent to the Hiran and Midi provinces.
Khulani added that the fighting was still ongoing and that the army continued its incursion into the Hiran and Abes districts, as the teams began the process of extracting the landmines planted by the Huthi militias before they fled.
The military source also pointed out that the continuous fighting and raids by coalition fighters resulted in significant human and material losses among the Houthi ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews ... militias.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/18/2018
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Top|| File under: Houthis
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.
[Guardian] Since launching his bid for America’s top office, Donald Trump has figured prominently in Canada’s national conversation; he’s been called a fascist, and a bully, and was unanimously condemned by parliamentarians after he lashed out at the prime minister, Justin Trudeau.
[10News] Former FBI Director James Comey is urging "all who believe in this country's values" to vote for Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections.
[Quartz] Johannesburg - Barack Obama could have been appearing on a pop-star’s stage. Yet the message he delivered in the annual Nelson Mandela lecture was far more somber than the setting.
[CBS] Special counsel Robert Mueller's team has asked Judge T.S. Ellis in Virginia to grant immunity to and protect the identities of five individuals who are set to testify against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. 
No further investigative information on the DNC Awan tech issue, the Debbie Wasserman Schultz laptop, or the 30,000 missing Clinton emails can be released. All of this data is now part of an ongoing indictment involving 12 Russian hackers. An indictment that will likely span years, possibly decades before final resolution. 
MENASHA, Wis. (WFRV) - A 37-year-old woman suffered injuries to her face after falling in between a gap on the Racine Street Bridge while on her bike, according to Menasha Police.
One must wonder. 
[Wash Times] The Windy City may soon experiment with giving its citizens cash windfalls via a universal basic income pilot program.
[PJ] Democrat candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has made a huge splash since trouncing incumbent Democrat Joe Crowley in the NY-14 primary, calls herself a socialist and is big on activism, if not geopolitics.
...ethnic Uzbek warlord who distinguished himself fighting the Soviets and the Taliban. The story that he had a bad guy run over with a tank is an exaggeration. It was an armored personnel carrier...
Aleppo (Syria News) The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) launched new attacks against the 
... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf, then by the courts...
...Pak dynastic politician, brother of PM Nawaz Sharif, chief minister of Punjab...
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
[DAWN] Iran is ready to boost its uranium enrichment to higher levels if talks fail with 
[PRESSTV] Former US President Barrack Obama decries ’utter loss of shame in 
...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances...
John 
... 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...
... the lunatic leader of Boko Haram who has been reported dead at least eleven times, pledged his body and soul to ISIS, told his fighters to hang it up once or twice, and been fired by the Caliph and refused to step down ...
...the head of ISIS, or what remains of it, and a veteran of the Abu Graib jailhouse. Looks like a new messiah to bajillions of Moslems, like just another dead-eyed mass murder to the rest of us. So far he has been killed at least four times, though not yet by a stake through the heart...
...current head of the Pak Jamaat-e-Islami. Siraj was born in 1962 and entered politics shortly after that...
