[PJMedia] We are living in amazing times, astonishing times, times I wouldn’t have believed possible as little as a year ago.
There is this Jorge Luis Borges story, where the old gods are returning to Earth, but upon their arrival, it is found that they have lost the ability to speak. Instead, when they open their mouths, they caw or roar, or make other bestial sounds. The populace, disgusted, turns away from them and refuses to worship them. I don’t remember precisely (it’s been years since I read them), but I think in the end the "gods" get utterly destroyed.
That’s what’s been happening to the left this last year.
...Part of what led to the dominance of the left in all the "gatekeeping" places, including publishing, the arts, education, and to a large extent government, was two things: their ability to project intelligence and calm; and the ruthlessness to not only not hire anyone who wasn’t a fellow-traveler, but also to kick out everyone who disagreed with them as soon as they could.
The second led to, by a ruthless and slow process, getting rid of everyone who wasn’t first at least social-democrat, then socialist, and finally outright communist from most of the fields the left captured. (And if one is to believe Robert A. Heinlein, the process was completed with the Democratic Party back in the forties.)
The first led to their holding that power, because not only did they have control of the mass media, and really, all forms of cultural communication, but they could project the calm and gentle impression of being the sane ones.
...Which is how we've come to where we’re now, with the left in control of all the cultural high ground and being able to declare, at will, that so and so is excommunicated or unworthy.
...And then this amazing thing happened (try this one easy trick!) -- something we’d predicted much earlier, and which frankly we’d despaired would come to pass: for whatever reason, the left’s dominance of the heights of culture failed them in a national election.
Perhaps it was that Donald Trump is such a dark horse; perhaps it is that Hillary Clinton is such an unappetizing, corrupt candidate; perhaps it was the new media dominance revealing the crazy face of the left; perhaps it was the fact that the left had decided to fight the strangest battles, such as who got to pee where; perhaps it was a combination of all of these.
All I know is that the minute Donald Trump was elected, the left lost whatever shred of sanity that had let them hold on to "normal appearing" speech and attitudes.
...Who would have thought the election of a rather conventional, traditional NYC Democrat could achieve this?
In one year they’ve destroyed much of what took them close to a hundred years to achieve.
They still look ‐ with a few exceptions ‐ like American upper-class, polished, well-mannered individuals. But the things that come out of their mouths cannot in any way be mistaken for "normal."
The "old gods" have returned. But they’ve forgotten human speech. And the humans are noticing. Their speech still sounds normal to themselves. They have no clue what comes next.
These ... err ... "gals" get it.
The all-woman league formerly known as the Lingerie Football League announced this week its belief that America's flag and national anthem are "far too sacred" to protest.
The league, recently rebranded as the Legends Football League, said in a Tuesday statement that its players would not be taking a knee during the national anthem as many of their male counterparts in the NFL have done.
"The LFL recognizes everyone's First Amendment right to protest, but our nation's flag and anthem are far too sacred," the league said. "Too many fellow Americans have made the ultimate sacrifice, so that our flag and anthem continue in all its majesty."
In a video announcing the league's continued support for the national anthem, the LFL pledged to "stand in salute" of the flag.
"It symbolizes all the blood, sweat, and tears that have been shed so that we as Americans can raise our flag across our nation," the organization says during the video. "The LFL salutes all those who make this the greatest country in the world."
"We stand in salute of our flag."
This year's Legends Cup Champions were the Seattle Mist, which defeated the Atlanta Steam 38 to 28 in the finals. The Mist finished the season undefeated.
[WRCB-TV] A Chattanooga man faces attempted murder charges for attacking a woman and gouging her eyes out.
Chattanooga Police say it happened around 6:15 p.m. Wednesday on Frances Drive. When they arrived they found the victim lying face down on the ground. Police also found an eyeball lying on the ground next to her. My Gawd man. Pick a socket, stick it back in and be quick about it !
Police arrested the suspect, Michael Roberson, who was still at the residence. The woman was taken to the hospital. Medical staff say the woman was stabbed multiple times and both her eyeballs were out. Other than the vision problem and a few knife wounds, she's in excellent health and taking nourishment.
Roberson told police he and the woman began arguing. He told police blacked out and doesn't remember what he did. He is booked at the Hamilton County Jail with a $500,000 bond.
Let's say Satellite at roughly 400 km altitude, so 167 seconds in projectile travel at which point the sat has moved 1,336 km in an orbital arc. Ran out of time to do the geometry.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
09/29/2017 12:37
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#4
OK I'm sold. When does the sidearm version come to Brownells?
Posted by: Large Peacock6383 ||
09/29/2017 12:37
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#5
The 100 mile capability is overkill. A dash mounted fire control system would be ideal however.
#7
42,543 km circumference of Satellite's arc (assuming circular and not elliptical). Satellite travels 3% of circumference in 167 seconds.
Your lead angle should be about 11.3 degrees in the direction of travel, if I've done this right (lot's more assumptions). Seems like a lot, but that little sucker travels a bit in the just under three minutes it would take for 'contact' by the slug.
Geostationary sats sit out at ~36,000 km, so that's a straight shot, only it would take the projectile almost two hours to get there.
Lot's of assumptions (like the rail gun having no distance limitations or the projectile never slowing down), but we're talking spherical chickens in a vacuum.
Big Friggin' Lasers would work better for small space targets.
Besoeker, I do like the thought of dash-mounted controls, especially when I have to drive in metro Chicago, Minneapolis or Milwaukee. Would want to have to have front and rear delivery systems, though.
And a bigger alternator.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
09/29/2017 16:24
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#8
Where does the energy come from to power this beast? The US had another "breakthrough" technology: pneumatic cannons firing dynamite shells in the USS Vesuvius(1888). Interesting idea, air is an ever present propellant, right? Only thing is that explosives are a much more efficient way of storing energy...
Wake me up when they solve the powerplant and energy storage issues...
[WAPO] In selling President Trump’s tax plan, his aides have resorted to making strikingly misleading statements to defend it.
At the moment, there are few details about the tax plan, only broad strokes. That makes it easier for the administration to make big claims as analysts scramble to try to make sense of the plan’s possible impact. That will be much harder once an actual tax bill is written and the details can be analyzed in depth.
In the meantime, we have a pair of Four-Pinocchio claims that are worth highlighting.
#4
If Trump can get the Economy humming the dogs yapping at his heals will become irrelevant and they all know it. A proper tax plan is a big way towards making that happen.
#5
Under other administrations they'd make noises but actually go along with it as they could then have loop-hole give-aways to donors for another decade or two before they had to repeat again.
[CNN] Retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who commanded the military response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, slams President Donald Trump's response to hurricane-ravaged.
Press Sec. Sarah Sanders twitter feed:
At @ricardorossello request, @POTUS has authorized the Jones Act be waived for Puerto Rico. It will go into effect immediately.
8:02 AM - Sep 28, 2017
#6
It's a Caribbean nation. As such, sometimes it rains real hard, the winds blow and the lights blink. Severe tropical storms, that sort of thing. Anyone salt anything back for a rainy day ?
Wiki - "The Puerto Rican government-debt crisis is a financial crisis affecting the government of Puerto Rico. After decades of mismanagement, the government's outstanding debt pile exceeds $70 billion."
#11
The problem in PR is not the shipping, but rather the backlog of unloading the ships and delivering the supplies.
McCain has a bug in his bonnet for repealing the Jones Act. It is one of his obsessions. It is not the issue here.
I think that Honore's moment of fame and good sense has come and went. Sad.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/29/2017 14:28
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#12
Same story seen in Haiti earthquake.
Can't land relief planes, no secure airports or handlers.
Can't dock many deep water ships because of port debris, few available cargo handling facilities and fewer workers.
No infrastructure to serve any of it.
Haven't heard much from the big industries like Union Carbide or the Navy. Away from city centers and tourist clusters PR is a third world country in a nice suit.
[AP] HANOI, Vietnam (AP) ‐ The former head of state-owned PetroVietnam was sentenced to death Friday for embezzlement and abuse of power committed in his former job leading a bank partly owned by Vietnam’s oil-and-gas giant. A judge in the graft case involving dozens of defendants warned that corruption by Communist Party members and civil servants threatened the regime’s survival.
Nguyen Xuan Son was convicted by the Hanoi People’s Court of embezzling $2.15 million and abusing his power to appropriate another $8.7 million from Ocean Bank, a joint stock bank in which PetroVietnam had owned 20 percent of shares.
Ocean Bank chairman Ha Van Tham was given a term of life imprisonment for convictions on the same charges at the end of the monthlong trial involving 51 defendants, most of them Ocean Bank executives.
"The acts of Nguyen Xuan Son and Ha Van Tham are particularly serious, infringing on the rights of property of the state and organization causing anger and dissonant among the people that needs to be handled seriously ... in the fight against crimes in general and corruption in particular in the current time," said Truong Viet Toan, one of the two judges in announcing the verdict that lasted nearly three hours.
Toan said corruption degraded a number of Communist Party members and civil servants who stole the people’s trust in the ruling Communist Party and state and threatened to survival of the regime.
[Right Scoop] Well that escalated quickly. Now we have entire schools being suspended for protesting.
Now, in this case, they didn’t protest during the national anthem, they did it afterward.
But the school ain’t messin’ around:
When a group of students from Victory Preparatory Academy in Commerce City sat for their school’s pledge, administrators reportedly made the call to send all high school students home for the day.
School officials confirmed Thursday they sent parents notifications after sending home all 120 students in grades 9 through 12 for the day.
Students say they were brought to the school’s auditorium after they sat through the school’s daily pledge to protest what they call a lack of school spirit and a lack of opportunity. After they were brought to the auditorium, administrators sent them home.
"It was a peaceful protest," said Victor Sanchez, a student at the high school who said the students feel their voices have not been heard. "That was the point ‐ to be heard. We want to make a difference."
The school’s pledge follows the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance, which the students did stand and recite.
A nation of professional protesters that isn’t trained to do anything else...
#3
Commerce, CO Demographics: Hispanic or Latino of any race are 46.8% of the population.
The median income for a household in the city was $33,680, and the median income for a family was $37,279
Uh huh
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/29/2017 9:27
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Principal Me "I have heard your protests and in response I insist each student write a 10 pages essay on one of the recent incidences of police shootings with details from the incident itself to the trial and aftermath."
Let them study about thugs keeping a community down, police trying to keep the peace, and false narratives that burned those communities rather than just headlines and memes.
#6
Or do to them what happened to me when I got a five day suspension senior year - you can't make up any missed tests. That would cure this shit in one week. I failed US Government that quarter and came very close to fucking myself out of admission to UNH.
(I'm so old I remember when schools taught classes about the US Government!)
[CNN] Fresh off his insurgent candidate's big win in Alabama, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon is making clear he is seeking retribution against fellow Republican campaign operatives who work against him.
CNN gets it wrong again. It's not "retribution" it's a President Trump 'road show.' Steve Bannon wasn't fired, he was deployed to the field where he can make the greatest positive impact for the administration.
[Wash Times] Colin Kaepernick started out taking a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality, but his activism has since expanded to encompass a wide range of leftist causes, including a group named after a convicted cop-killer.
The Colin Kaepernick Foundation donated in April $25,000 to Assata’s Daughters, a Chicago "direct action" resistance organization honoring Assata Shakur, who escaped prison and fled to Cuba after being found guilty in the 1973 murder of Officer Werner Foerster.
The grant includes $2,500 for CopWatch, a program that trains volunteers to follow and video police, and $15,000 for teen training, part of the group’s commitment to "develop and train young people, ages 4-19, in the Black queer feminist tradition and in the spirit of Assata."
Apparently Mr. Kaepernick is also a fan: He retweeted a July 16 message wishing Shakur a happy birthday.
The contribution came as part of Mr. Kaepernick’s pledge last year to donate $1 million over 10 months to "organizations working in oppressed communities."
#3
The contribution came as part of Mr. Kaepernick’s pledge last year to donate $1 million over 10 months to "organizations working in oppressed communities."
So, we have another 9-months of trolling to go?
And doesn't $1,000,000/10 = $100,000? Is Mr. Kaepernick's White-half privilege Virtue Signalling only humming along at 25% for the loverly Ms. Chesimard?
imo, Mr. Kaepernick has some serious mental health issues in addition to having problems resolving his DNA with his ROI.
#5
Kaepernick is in a relationship with an ethnic studies professor at Berserkley. She is fanatical to the degree that she makes Angela Davis look moderate.
I think has a lot to do with this relationship.
He's wake up one day and realized he pissed away his career and then he'll cut that laughable 1970's Afro and STFU.
BLUF:
[LI] With President Donald Trump’s attacks against protesting NFL players still reverberating, the league’s TV partners decided to air live coverage of the national anthem before Week 3 games. Those partners left out a key element of the coverage: crowd shots of angry fans.
Networks typically do not televise the national anthem except for the Super Bowl and other special occasions, but they recognized there would be intense viewer interest this past weekend.
Some fans, if they reacted at all, happily clapped and cheered during protests, but others did not, and they angrily let their home teams know it. The audio mics picked up the boos. Yet the TV networks mostly avoided crowd shots Sunday, so there was never a chance for viewers to see fans jeering players.
A segment of Patriots fans in Foxborough, Mass., for example, nearly booed their own players off the field when some Pats sat or kneeled, with some screaming, "Stand up!"
#7
Once you have a fleet of reusable Falcon rockets, why keep building more? he believes by next year he will already be serving 50% of the total launch market.
Posted by: si vis pacem, para bellum ||
09/29/2017 16:18
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#8
We found the finite count of remaining Shuttle missions was OBE and really needed to pull some out of the closet. Nobody is going to stop or dismantle capability.
[DAWN] At least a dozen Afghan cops officials were killed when a suicide kaboomer driving an explosives-packed Humvee went kaboom! in the southern province of Kandahar, police said on Thursday.
The Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... claimed the deadly assault on the government and police headquarters in Maroof district that also maimed several others.
"Twelve security officials were killed and four others were maimed," Kandahar police front man Zia Durrani told AFP.
Durrani said that the Taliban attackers had been "defeated".
A border police commander in Maroof, which borders Pakistain, gave a slightly higher toll, telling AFP that 14 security personnel had been killed and eight maimed in the attack that happened late on Wednesday.
"The intensity of the blast caused damage to the building and led to casualties," he said. "The clean-up operation is under way in the area."
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
My heart always bleeds a little bit when police officers are killed...no matter the nationality. Some of the ones I met over there were brave dudes...killed in the line of duty...and the ones with families risked the night visits by the Taliban...dont know how they did it.
[Iraq News] Iraqi Federal Police have concluded combing of areas recently recaptured from 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.... in north of Salahuddin, killing 52 murderous Moslems, Interior Ministry said.
During a weekly presser, Brig.Gen. Saad Maan, spokesperson of the ministry, said, "Federal Police troops accomplished purged of the eastern coast of Shirqat from IS remnants and sleeper cells, inflicting huge losses in lives and equipments on the enemy. 52 bandidosbully boyz were killed, while two booby-trapped vehicles and four headquarters were destroyed.
Troops, "seized six weapons of different kinds and confiscated four rest houses, in addition to detonating 26 bombs," Maan said, adding that 66 villages were liberated.
Federal Police announced, earlier this week, liberation of eastern Shirqat, the group’s holdout in north of Salahuddin.
225 bandidosbully boyz had been killed since the launch of operations in Shirqat, Jawdat previously announced.
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More court kabuki theater, but it keeps everybody busy while the jugged people remain in jail.
[AlAhram] A Beni Suef criminal court has sentenced Moslem Brüderbund supreme guide Mohammed Badie and three others to 25 years in prison for inciting violence that led to festivities in the governorate on 14 August 2013, al-Ahram Arabic news website reported.
The violence, which occurred after the dispersal of sit-ins in Cairo protesting the ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi, involved the torching of a cop shoppe, a notary office and a school in Beni Suef.
The court also sentenced 12 other people to 25 years in prison in absentia and 77 others to 15 years.
The trial involved 92 defendants, with 25 in jug and 67 tried in absentia.
The defendants include leading Brotherhood figures including member of the group’s guidance office Abdel-Azim El-Sharkawy and former MPs with the Brotherhood’s now-dissolved Freedom and Justice Party.
Badie has previously received prison sentences in other cases.
Kamran Sabir Hussain, 40, from Stoke-on-Trent, delivered his lecturers from a lecturn in front of a black ISIS flag, to a congregation that included children
The jury was not aware that the mosque was visited by Mohibur Rahman, who was convicted of plotting a pipe bomb and machete attack earlier this year
Content of the speeches was revealed by an undercover officer who attended
At the Old Bailey today, Hussain was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in jail
Posted by: trailing wife ||
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[AlAhram] The Tunisian navy has placed in durance vile Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try! more than 550 Tunisian and African migrants colonists trying to sail to Europe ...also known as Moslem Lebensraum... in September, nearly three times more than last month, official data showed.
Human traffickers increasingly use Tunisia as a launch pad for migrants colonists heading for Europe as Libya's coasties, aided by gangs, has tightened controls.
Tunisia's navy stopped boats with migrants colonists departing from beaches in the south and north of the country, arresting 555 people in September, the data showed. In August only 170 people had been caught trying to depart from Tunisia by boat.
"We succeeded in foiling many attempts, which have increased significantly as the weather improves and smugglers are promoting that journeys coming out of Tunisia are more safe than other destinations," Colonel Major Khelifa Chibani of Tunisia's national guard told Rooters.
He said pregnant women and kiddies had been among the migrants colonists caught while trying to depart by boat.
[Ynet] The US military says it has killed three men who played key roles in developing, building and modifying 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.... drones.
Col. Ryan Dillon, a front man for the US-led military coalition in Baghdad, told news hounds at the Pentagon Thursday that the three were killed in a series of US Arclight airstrikes in Syria in mid-September.
Dillon says two of the men were responsible for manufacturing and modifying commercially produced drones. The other man was described as a drone developer, who was killed when his research workshop near Mayadin, Syria, was hit by two Arclight airstrikes.
The Islamic State group has used drones for surveillance and to fire small weapons, in both Syria and Iraq.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
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[DAWN] THE point about the terrorist archetype is that there is no terrorist archetype. In his recent article in these pages (Sept 10), Amir Rana pointed out that Lion of Islam tendencies are common in all segments of society, irrespective of socioeconomic or educational backgrounds.
Now, pundits, babus bureaucrats and media commentators offer multiple explanations for the waves of terrorism in which we are embroiled. There is an assumption that there are political objectives, or ’causes’, involved. These violent killers are the products of poverty, of brainwashing, of fanatical religiosity, of the desire to go to heaven, of hatred for the American presence in Afghanistan, of the injustices done to ’the Moslem world’. And so on and so forth. And, therefore, if only this ... or that ... or the other ... is done, all the violence will end.
For those grasping at such conceptual straws, it is necessary to suggest that, even if everything were to be happily resolved, from Paleostine to Kashmire, and all grievances, real or imagined, removed so that utopias of prosperity are ushered in, these butchers would still find reason to continue plying their gruesome trade. At bottom, these orgies of violence have little to do with ’causes’.
Continued on Page 49
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#4
Finally, let us understand that it is not enough to fight set-piece battles in the mountains. The zombies in our cities and villages must be disarmed and deprogrammed and their destroyed humanity restored. Or else they must be eliminated.
[DAWN] As fear gripped residents of Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... 's Gulistan-e-Jauhar area after reports surfaced of a knife attacker targeting women in the area, police on Thursday said they had launched a manhunt and an investigation into the motivation and identity of the attacker.
Police officials, confirming media reports, said they are looking for an "armed [cycle of violence] rider" who allegedly attacked and maimed a number of women in the area over the past few days.
Three First Information Reports (FIRs) have been registered ─ two at the Shahrah-e-Faisal cop shoppe and one at the Gulistan-e-Jauhar cop shoppe ─ on the complaint of three women who said that they had been attacked by a lone "knife-wielding" motorcyclist.
"We have registered three FIRs regarding incidents in which three women were attacked and maimed," said Superintendent of Police Gulshan-e-Iqbal Ghulam Murtaza Bhutto.
SP Bhutto said that the three attacks had taken place on Monday, whereas the administration at a local hospital had informed the police of another attack on Tuesday.
"The police have launched a manhunt for the arrest of the motorcyclist by deploying plainclothed men. Different localities of Gulistan-e-Jauhar have also been notified," SP Bhutto said.
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[DAWN] Two Malaysian teenagers were charged on Thursday with murder after being accused of intentionally setting fire at an Islamic boarding school that killed 23 people, mostly students.
The accused boys are minors but prosecutor Othman Abdullah said he couldn't immediately provide their exact ages.
Because of their age, they will not face a possible death penalty. Othman said no plea was taken from the two boys and the magistrate set a hearing for November 28.
They were among seven teenagers detained days after the September 14 blaze for allegedly using cooking gas tanks and petrol to set fire to a dormitory on the top floor of the tahfiz school, where Moslem students learn to memorise the Koran.
The blaze blocked the lone exit to the dormitory, trapping students behind barred windows, killing two teachers and 21 students between the ages of 6 to 17.
Police have said the suspects sought Dire Revenge after allegedly being teased by some tahfiz students a few days before the fire.
Othman said the two murder suspects, plus four other boys who were detained, have been charged with drug abuse. One of the seven has been released due to lack of evidence, he added.
Several family members of the fire victims and journalists were shooed out of the court room before the teens were charged.
Mas Aliza Ali Bapoo, 22, said she hopes the court will mete out justice for her three cousins who died in the blaze ‐ the three boys aged 13, 11 and 10 joined the school in January.
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[THESUN.CO.UK] ISIS propaganda chiefs have released chilling footage of a fresh-faced child jacket wallah blowing himself up in the desert.
Stills taken from a video show the lad ‐ in his mid-teens ‐ behind the wheel of a vehicle packed with explosives.
Footage from a drone reveals several Syrian military vehicles dug into a position in the sand before the attack.
A huge mushroom cloud can then be seen over the outpost as the suicide bomber detonates his lethal payload close to the city of Deir Ezzor.
The youngster betrays no emotion in the photos taken just moments before he met his death.
The vile terror group is known to drug fighters up with the tranquiliser Zolam which it seized from hospitals so they do not back out of the deadly missions.
Another teen suicide bomber who was captured by Kurdish forces before he could detonate his bomb previously revealed the use of the anti-anxiety drug.
He said: "That drug makes your mind not your own.
"If they give you a suicide belt and tell you to blow yourself up, you'll do it."
ISIS is now known to be so short of fighters that the group is using kids, the elderly and disabled to bolster its numbers.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[Iraq News] Twenty 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.... bully boyz were killed in air raids launched by the anti-IS international coalition Arclight airstrikes in Ramadi, west of Anbar, a commander said.
"The U.S.-led coalition jets shelled IS bully boyz gathering in western Ramadi desert," Major General Mahmoud al-Falahi, commander of Anbar Operations, told AlSumaria News on Thursday.
"The shelling left twenty IS bully boyz killed," he added.
Ramadi was recaptured by government and tribal forces from IS in December 2015, however, several occasional attacks by the group have occurred since then.
Early on Wednesday, the bully boy group invaded al-Tash and the 5th Kilometer regions, south and west of Ramadi. The bully boyz reportedly took over al-Tash and al-Jamea (university) areas after invading them with 20 pickup trucks. 40 IS bully boyz were killed, while three injured others were maimed, Brig. Gen. Saad Maan, spokesperson of Baghdad Operations said in a weekly presser on Thursday.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[IsraelTimes] Police say man employed at Tel Aviv construction site confessed to intending to buy a knife in order 'to stab Jews'
A Paleostinian man locked away Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try! Wednesday after working illegally in Israel admitted to planning a stabbing attack, police said on Thursday.
While being interrogated, the Paleostinian worker confessed to seeking to buy a knife in order "to stab Jews," according to police.
Police said the suspect, who was working at a construction site in Tel Aviv, was detained during an operation against employers of illegal Paleostinian workers.
The Paleostinian, a West Bank resident born in 1996, will be brought the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court on Thursday for a hearing on extending his remand, police said.
Police did not reveal the name or hometown of the suspect.
In August 2016, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot said that an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 Paleostinians enter Israel illegally every day in order to work by exploiting weak points in Israel’s West Bank security barrier. At the time, the IDF chief also said that over 40 percent of the terror attacks carried out during a roughly year-long upsurge in violence beginning in October 2015 were in some way connected to Paleostinians who were in Israel illegally.
In June 2016, Paleostinian cousins Muhammad and Khalid Muhamra of the southern West Bank town of Yatta killed four Israelis in a shooting attack at Tel Aviv’s popular Sarona Market after entering Israel illegally, with the attack leading to widespread scrutiny in the country over the ability of tens of thousands of Paleostinians to enter the country illegally every day.
[DAWN] The National Assembly (NA) Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs on Thursday slammed Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif for suggesting that the country must "put [its] house in order" while being interviewed during his trip to the United States for 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... ' General Assembly.
Members of the committee were of the view that Asif's statement mocked the sacrifices made by the army in its fight against terrorism and also supported the new US policy on South Asia and its demand for Islamabad to "do more".
Last month, US President 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... had accused Pakistain of providing "safe havens" to terrorists, evoking a strong response from both the government and the opposition.
The committee wondered whose interests the foreign minister was protecting, and demanded that Asif be summoned in the next meeting to explain his statements.
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.... 's Shireen Mazari reiterated her party's stance on Asif's statements, saying that if the country's foreign minister kept on giving such statements, "Pakistain will not need an external enemy".
The committee also directed the foreign affairs secretary to brief the committee on the government's new policy regarding the US.
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[DAWN] Setting up a permanent village on the moon is the first step towards exploring Mars, the European Space Agency said on Thursday as plans to reach and colonise the Red Planet gathered pace.
At an annual gathering of 4,000 global space experts in Adelaide, the ESA said the Moon was the "right place to be" as humans expand economic activities beyond low-Earth orbit, even while Mars remained the "ultimate destination".
"We have been living in low-Earth orbit for the last 17 years on board a space station and we are on our journey to Mars for the first human mission," ESA's Piero Messina told AFP at the congress.
"In between, we believe that there is an opportunity to create a permanent... sustainable presence on the surface of the Moon."
Reaching and colonising Mars has been viewed by private and public interests as the next stage in exploring the final frontier and has been a key part of this year's International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide.
Messina said the more immediate goal was to have a permanent presence on the Moon, even if it was just a robot, by the end of the next decade.
"There are a series of missions planned to the moon over the next 10 years, and all these missions will create a movement, a momentum, and will create a wealth of data that will enable building the village," he added.
"I think it's the right time now to start discussing, start planning for something which is as inspiring as the space station but on a truly global, international-cooperation basis."
The space agency has been touting the permanent lunar colony as a replacement for the orbiting International Space Station, which is due to be decommissioned in 2024.
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#1
It's been shown that you can manufacture oxygen in a controlled environment on Mars, but it helps if you set up camp near one of the poles. Also, it's been shown that the notion of a preliminary outpost on the Moon is a wastefully dumb idea, instead place a number of payloads in one of the Moon's Lagrangian points - assemble in weightlessness, and you're off to Mars.
Powdered soy milk and strawberry (don't forget the Aloe Vera gel - you'll need it because of the radiation) would be excellent for breakfast, and supply ships containing attractive young teenage women (I'll go with Poles again for this one), along with lots of Omaha Steaks, charcoal, some lighter fluid and an apparatus for fermenting whiskry would round out the payload.
Don't know about nitrogen - if it's really necessary simply place bags of the steaks out in the radiation.
#3
I'd prefer plans for a moon to "space elevator/tether" which is possible with today's technology to be planned.
Or even electromagnetic cannon for launching cargo.
or a solar-powered mineral extraction device.
[DAWN] Chief of the Army Staff Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa inaugurated the Army Public School and College in Swat ...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat... on Wednesday.
The Inter-Services Public Relations said in a statement that the institution was a gift from the Pakistain Army to the resilient people of Swat in recognition of their contributions and sacrifices in defeating terrorism.
The facility with a capacity of 3,600 students is equipped with computer and science labs, an auditorium and a sports stadium.
Gen Bajwa, who visited the Kanju garrison in Swat, interacted with students, faculty members, administration and local elders.
"There is no better approach towards enduring peace and stability than providing quality education to our youth," he said.
The elders thanked the army chief for the establishment of Swat cantonment and the school. Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. Corps Commander Lt Gen Nazir Ahmed Butt was present on the occasion.
Also on Wednesday, the army chief inaugurated 14km Ghalanai-Mohmand Gat Road that included the 751-metre Nahakki tunnel.
The ISPR said that the first phase of the total 41km road had been completed, while work on the remaining portion was in progress.
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[DAWN] Following the disclosure that fingerprints of over 29,000 voters in a constituency were missing from Nadra’s database, the Election Commission of Pakistain (ECP) has sought details of the electorate across the country whose fingerprints and photographs are not available with the National Database and Registration Authority.
In a letter written to the Nadra chairman, the ECP has drawn the attention of the authority to the fact that the commission had asked Nadra to provide biometrics of all voters of NA-120 for the purpose of pilot testing of biometric verification machines in the constituency.
The letter says Nadra provided the requisite data of majority of voters of the constituency and informed the ECP that biometrics of 29,607 voters were not available with the authority as fingerprints of 27,121 voters were not available for the reason that they had been issued CNICs prior to induction of biometric machines into Nadra and 2,271 voters were NICOP holders and their biometrics were not available.
It points out that one of the candidates in the constituency, Dr Yasmin Rashid, moved the Lahore High Court, raising objections to the credibility of electoral rolls on the ground of non-availability of the biometrics of 29,607 voters.
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[Iran Press TV] A court in Bahrain has upheld 15-year jail terms handed down to seven citizens as the Manama regime presses ahead with its crackdown on human rights ...which often include carefully measured allowances of freedom at the convenience of the state... activists and pro-democracy campaigners in the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom.
On Thursday, Bahrain’s Court of Appeal found the defendants guilty of killing a member of security forces and setting his patrol car ablaze with a Molotov cocktail during festivities in the village of Karzakan, located 20 kilometers southwest of the capital Manama, on December 17, 2015, Arabic-language and independent Manama Post online newspaper reported.
The court also pressed charges of illegal gathering and rioting in addition to possession of flammable materials against the convicts, and ordered them to pay 10,200 dinars ($27,835) altogether over damage inflicted on regime forces during the protest.
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[Iran Press TV] Leb's Military Tribunal has sentenced an turban preacher to death for his role in fueling sectarian violence in the Arab country and organizing attacks against members of the army.
The court, chaired by Major General Hussein Abdullah, passed the verdict on Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir on Thursday. Thirty-three other defendants also stood trial on terrorism charges.
Former prominent Lebanese singer Fadl Shaker, who supported Assir, was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison. He is thought to be hiding in Ain al-Hilweh Paleostinian refugee camp west of the village of Mieh Mieh, which is located more than 45 kilometers south of the capital Beirut.
Also present in court were the preacher’s brother, Amjad al-Assir, and his two sons, Mohammad and Omar, who stand accused of organizing an gang.
Assir refused to recognize the ruling. He also rejected his court-appointed lawyer during the trial, saying, "You do not represent me and I do not recognize you."
Abdullah intervened, asking Assir whether he was threatening the court.
The Takfiri ...an adherent of takfir wal hijra, an offshoot of Salafism that regards everybody who doesn't agree with them as apostates who must be killed... holy man replied that he was "not threatening anyone, but it is my right ‐ as I am representing myself ‐ to advise you not to speak in my name."
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[Iran Press TV] A boom-mobile has went kaboom! near a marketplace in Somalia's capital Mogadishu, killing at least seven people and wounding several others.
A front man for Mogadishu’s mayor, Abdifatah Omar Halane, said the blast took place alongside a densely-populated road near Hamarweyne market in the capital on Thursday.
"The blast was caused by a luxurious car loaded with explosives, which exploded at a civilian, densely-populated area, and seven people were killed and several others maimed," media outlets quoted the front man as saying.
Abdinasir Mohammed, a witness to the blast, gave a slightly higher corpse count, saying, "There were eight people killed and most of them died in a civilian minibus which was passing by the area where the vehicle went off."
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[Iraq News] An alcoholics seller was killed as an IED went kaboom! under his car in Baghdad, a source from Interior Ministry said.
"A bomb placed under a car of an alcoholics seller went kaboom! on Tuesday evening as he was passing in central Baghdad, leaving him immediately dead," the source told Baghdad Today.
Security troops, according to the source, transferred the victim to forensic medicine department and conducted investigations.
A similar accident occurred earlier this month when an alcoholics seller was killed by an bomb fitted beneath his car in northeast Baghdad.
Moreover, a tribal fighter and three of his family members were maimed earlier on the day in an armed attack in south of Baghdad, a security source said.
Speaking to Alghad Press, the source said, "unknown gunnies attacked house of a Tribal Fighter Mobilization personnel using hand grenade in al-Kargol region, south of Baghdad," the source said.
"The attack left the personnel and three of his family member maimed," he added.
Violence in the country has surged further with the emergence of Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... Sunni myrmidonLions of Islam who proclaimed an "Islamic Caliphate" in Iraq and Syria in 2014.
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#1
And they worry about a future Kurdistan destabilizing Iraq.
[Ynet] Paleostinians have been violently rioting since the terror attack that claimed the lives of three Israeli security personnel; undercover agents catch one rioter red handed as he tries to set fire to a tire; Abbas indirectly condemns attack.
Police placed in durance vile Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'! three rioters on Thursday evening in the Paleostinian village of Biddu, not far from Har Adar where three security personnel were killed in a terror attack earlier this week.
The suspects, who were arrested in a complex operation of the Border Police's Jerusalem counterterrorism undercover unit, were taken for questioning.
Since the attack on Tuesday, Paleostinians have been violently rioting in Biddu, which is close to Beit Surik, the home of Nimer Jamal, the terrorist who carried out the attack.
The rioting led to the special arrest operation, which included Border Police agents going undercover among the rioters. One of the suspects was caught red handed while trying to set fire to a tire.
The attack claimed the lives of Border Policeman Solomon Gavriya and security guards Youssef Ottman and Or Arish.
[REUTERS] 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.... leader His Supreme Immensity, Caliph of the Faithful and Galactic Overlord, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ...formerly merely the head of ISIL and a veteran of the Bagram jailhouse. Looks like a new messiah to bajillions of Moslems, like just another dead-eyed mass murder to the rest of us... exhorted followers on Thursday to stand fast and keep fighting in his first purported audio communication in almost a year during which his jihadist group lost much of its self-proclaimed "caliphate".
The audio, partly dedicated to religious scriptures, came after several reports Baghdadi had been killed. His last recording was in November 2016, two weeks after the start of the battle to recapture the city of djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... from Islamic State (IS).
The date of the 46-minute recording, released via the al-Furqan news organization, was not clear. But in it, Baghdadi makes an apparent reference to recent events including North Korean threats against Japan and United States and the recapture two months ago of Mosul by U.S.-backed Iraqi forces.
Since Baghdadi proclaimed the caliphate stretching across Iraq and Syria in 2014, Iraqi forces have retaken a string of cities in western and northern Iraq including Mosul, where Baghdadi made his announcement from the city’s El Nuri mosque.
Western-backed Syrian forces are also thrusting into the eastern Syrian city of Raqqa, Islamic State’s operational headquarters from where it plotted many of the attacks that have killed hundreds of people around the world.
"Beware of retreat, or the feeling of defeat, beware of negotiations or surrender. Do not lay down your arms," Baghdadi said, referring to followers in Iraq, Syria, 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... , North Africa and elsewhere in Africa.
"Oh Soldiers of the Caliphate, fan the flames of war on your enemies, take it to them and besiege them in every corner, and stand fast and courageous."
Baghdadi also referenced Western media, saying: "Oh soldiers of Islam in every location, increase blow after blow, and make the media centers of the infidels, and where they wage their intellectual wars, among your targets."
The fall of Mosul in July effectively marked the end of the Iraqi half of Baghdadi’s "caliphate" even though Islamic State continues to fight in some territory outside of Mosul, the largest city they came to control in both Iraq and Syria.
An IS branch in Libya was also defeated last year in the city of Sirte, where they had set up a North African beachhead in 2014. In Egypt’s northern Sinai, another affiliated murderous Moslem group is still fighting Egyptian military forces.
"With God’s will and his strength, we are staying determined, patient...The abundance of killing will not stop us," Baghdadi said in the audio recording.
Officials have said they believed it could take years to capture or kill Baghdadi as he is thought to be hiding in a vast swathe of sparsely-populated desert between Mosul and Raqqa, where attacking drones are easy to spot.
The United States has offered a $25 million bounty for information that would locate Baghdadi.
Russia’s defense ministry said earlier this year it killed might have killed Baghdadi in an air strike on a gathering of IS commanders on the outskirts of Raqqa. But U.S. officials said they could not corroborate the death and other Western as well as Iraqi officials were skeptical.
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[DAWN] Two senior Central Jail officials in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... were jugged ... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not... on Thursday over alleged obstruction of the investigation of a jailbreak involving two high-profile snuffies in June.
The Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) arrested Central Jail Superintendent Ghulam Murtaza Sheikh and Assistant Superintendent Abdul Rehman Sheikh, CTD Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Amir Farooqi said, over a range of charges from alleged destruction of evidence to threatening witnesses.
DIG Farooqi, who was handling the jailbreak investigation, said the accused jailers were creating hindrances into the investigation of the two snuffies linked to the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi ... a 'more violent' offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain. LeJ's purpose in life is to murder anyone who's not of utmost religious purity, starting with Shiites but including Brelvis, Ahmadis, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Rosicrucians, and just about anyone else you can think of. They are currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda ... ─ Mumtaz, alias Firaun, and Ahmed, alias Munna, who were involved in the murders of 60 people, including members of the Shia community and law enforcement agencies.
The jail officials taken into custody were allegedly involved in ’destroying’ evidence relating to the investigation, and threatening witnesses who wished to cooperate with Sherlocks to record their statements.
DIG Farooqi said that this was third case registered against them in relation to the same incident.
The first case was registered against one dozen jail officials, including the two arrested officials, over the jailbreak.
A second case was registered against them after heroin, cellphones and cellphone signal jammers were recovered during a search operation by the Rangers inside the prison after the jailbreak in June.
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[Breitbart] The West Point mentor of a soldier now under investigation by the Army for engaging in political activity while in uniform is on administrative leave, Breitbart News has learned.
The adviser is Rasheed Hosein, a professor of Middle East history, who was in charge of Second Lieutenant Spenser Rapone’s development at West Point.
A West Point spokesman confirmed he is on administrative leave but said it is unrelated to Rapone.
“We are unable to provide information regarding administrative actions but can confirm that the details are unrelated to 2nd Lieutenant Rapone,” the spokesman said.
At West Point, Hosein had mentored Rapone. The two apparently traveled together to India together in 2014 and maintained a close relationship until Rapone graduated in May 2016.
Also during that time, Rapone’s Facebook posts grew increasingly radical and leftist.
The Army confirmed that Rapone graduated from West Point in 2016 and is now serving as a second lieutenant with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, based in Fort Drum, New York.
The unit issued its own statement that focused on uniform regulations.
“Both the Department of Defense and the Army have longstanding policies encouraging soldiers to participate in the democratic process. However, the Army has strict rules regarding the wear and appearance of Army uniforms.”
Rapone’s activism while in uniform appears to be much broader than those two photos.
On August 7, Rapone posted a photo on his Instagram account of himself in his Army uniform wearing a Democratic Socialists of America Membership nametag that says, “official socialist organizer.”
Rapone’s Instagram account was taken down Tuesday evening.
Sometime last year, he posted a picture on Instagram of an Antifa flag in his room next to a print of Che Guevara. “New room decor … until it’s flying proudly in the streets. #AntiFa,” he wrote, according to a picture obtained before he took down his account.
A review of Rapone’s Facebook page shows that over time, since 2014, his posts became increasingly anti-racism, anti-Israel, pro-Muslim, pro-Communist, anti-military, and anti-police.
On January 5, 2015, he posted a Slate.com article calling for the abolishment of West Point. As a Facebook friend since 2014, Hosein would have been aware of Rapone’s Facebook postings between 2014 and when he graduated in 2016. A search of Rapone’s page shows they are still Facebook friends.
Hosein’s bio on the West Point website lists Rapone as one of two cadets he last advised at West Point.
Hosein began teaching at West Point in July 2011. Previously, he served as the director of Public Education for the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago.
He was also Muslim Lay Chaplain at West Point, Officer in Charge of the Muslim Cadet Association, and Emeritus Facility Adviser of Phi Alpha Theta, a national history honor society of which Rapone was a member, according to a photo.
[TOWNHALL] So, Second Lt. Spenser Rapone surely got his 15 minutes of fame, with his tweets of support to Colin Kaepernick in the wake of the national anthem controversy that’s engulfing the National Football League. Kaepernick launched the first salvo of this leftist theater by taking a knee during the Star-Spangled Banner last year. Last week, President Trump slammed those players who took a knee during the national anthem. The firestorm has begun. Well, at West Point, Rapone tweeted “#VeteransforKaepernick” with him in uniform holding his officer’s cap with “communism will win” inscribed on the inside. He also tweeted another photo of himself revealing a Che Guevara t-shirt under his uniform.
#10
The two apparently traveled together to India together in 2014 and maintained a close relationship
Dunno why, but something about this smells funny.
#16
Everything Obama has done is too flagrant to be real.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
09/29/2017 11:33
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#17
I look for the retirement of the West Point Superintendent any minute now. LTG Caslen signed in on July 17, 2013, so it will be announced as a ..... normal end of tour event.
A very private retirement ceremony should be expected.
#20
"Well the bad news is you'll be spending about a week behind bars.", "That doesn't sound so bad." You'll have the cell to yourself>", "Even better." , "Your cell will have a bar in it. "I don't drink, so why?" , "The bar has a point on it and you'll be sitting on it on your tippy toes. "
[MarketWatch] The numbers: The U.S. economy’s pace of growth in the second quarter was raised to 3.1% from 3% under the government’s latest revisions to gross domestic product. The value of inventories rose by $5.5 billion, stronger than previously reported.
The increase in consumer spending was unchanged at 3.3%. Business investment in structures rose a stronger 7% instead of 6.2%. Exports were revised to show a smaller 3.5% gain. Imports advanced 1.5%.
Adjusted pretax corporate profits climbed 0.7% to an annualized $2.12 trillion, rebounding from a decline in the first quarter.
What happened: The somewhat stronger pace of growth in the spring shown by the latest government figures mostly reflects higher farmer inventories. The production of unsold goods such as crops or new cars adds to GDP.
Other key figures in the government’s third estimate of GDP, including readings on inflation, were little changed.
Big picture: The U.S. expanded in the spring at the fastest clip in two years, showing the economy has plenty of strength left more than eight years into a recovery.
Consumers have carried the load through higher spending, but businesses have upped the ante lately by investing more. Stronger profits also put companies in a better position to spend and invest.
The U.S. is on track to expand slightly faster than 2% in 2017, keeping in line with growth trends since the end of the Great Recession. Yet the recovery is also the weakest by historical standards: The U.S. has historically grown more than 3% a year.
[Institute For The Study of War] EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The United States will continue to risk its vital strategic interests in the Middle East unless it changes its policies in Syria and Iraq. President Donald Trump and his administration inherited a weakened U.S. position, with Russia imposing constraints on American freedom of action and options. The Trump administration has taken initial steps to advance U.S. prestige in the region by reassuring America’s traditional allies and acting more firmly against its enemies and adversaries. The tactical tasks of recapturing Mosul and liberating Raqqa from the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) are complete and nearly complete, respectively. Nevertheless, its efforts to define and execute policies that secure America’s vital interests are moving more slowly than those of America’s enemies, adversaries, and spoilers who are more agile than the U.S. These actors include Russia, Iran and its proxies, Turkey, ISIS, al Qaeda, and some Kurdish elements, who are pursuing goals that threaten American objectives and are exploiting the current situation to make strategic gains as the U.S. champions short-term gains and tactical success.
The Trump administration has not yet broken with its predecessor’s approach to the Middle East, particularly in Syria and Iraq. It has prioritized conducting counterterrorism operations against ISIS to recapture ISIS’s territory. American military forces have accelerated this campaign by relying on the most readily available local forces, including Kurdish forces in northern Syria that are aligned with terrorists targeting Turkey. The administration has eschewed a U.S. role in addressing the regional war’s underlying drivers, including the role of the Bashar al Assad regime in Syria and sectarianism in Iraq stoked by Iran. The main effort of the counter-ISIS fight must become preventing the organization from reconstituting and its rivals from inheriting its leadership of the Iraqi and global jihad. ISIS re-emerged from a defeated al Qaeda in Iraq and controlled Iraqi cities only three years after American troops departed in 2011.
The Trump administration has also acquiesced to an expanding Russian and Iranian ground campaign in Syria and a growing role for Iran inside Iraq. Its diplomatic efforts to end the wars have focused on the most expedient political outcomes shaped by dominant local and regional actors. It does not appear committed to shaping a long-term stabilization congruent with a wider set of American regional interests. The administration has expressed that it will confront and roll back Iran’s destabilizing campaign but has neither set the conditions for such a campaign nor undertaken sufficient policy action that will set conditions for such an outcome.
The Russo-Iranian coalition is exploiting the continuity in American strategy from President Obama to President Trump’s administration. It is now strengthening its grip in Syria while enabling the Assad regime to extend its positions. Vladimir Putin’s dependence on Iran for securing Russia’s most important interests in Syria ‐ its airbase at Latakia and naval base at Tartous ‐ will continue to ensure that he will remain intertwined in a deepening partnership with Tehran. The "de-escalation" agreements brokered in Syria will allow Russia to remain in the driver’s seat for shaping the overall political settlement. These agreements will also fail to prevent Iranian expansionism. Russian and Iran share the ambition to weaken and ultimately expel the U.S. from the region. They are continuing to position themselves to make that outcome a reality.
At least 12 security forces were killed in a suicide bombing in southern Kandahar province on Wednesday night, local officials confirmed on Thursday.
In addition, four other insurgents were wounded.
The attack took place in Maroof district of the province after a suicide bomber driving a Humvee vehicle targeted a security forces base in the center of the district, a spokesman for the provincial police chief, Zia Durani said.
“National, border policemen and NDS employees are among the dead,” Durni said.
However, he did not provide further details.
The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Taliban has on a few occasions used Humvees to carry out suicide attacks in Helmand and Kandahar.
Units of the Syrian Arab Army, in cooperation with the allied forces, achieved a new advance during their continued operations to defeat ISIL terrorists in Deir Ezzor city and its eastern countryside.
SANA reporter in Deir Ezzor said that army units launched accurate operations on fortifications and gatherings of ISIL terrorist organization on the northeastern axis, during which army units established control of several points towards the village of Hatla Fouqani, inflicting heavy losses upon many of the terrorists before others fled the area.
On the river island on the outskirts of the city of Deir Ezzor, the army units engaged in violent clashes with the remaining terrorists in Huweijet Saqr, killing or injuring many of them and destroying their fortifications and vehicles, according to the reporter.
The reporter said that the army’s air force and artillery destroyed gatherings, fortified sites and vehicles for ISIL in Huweijet Saqr, al-Rushdiyeh and Knamat.
Meanwhile, clashes erupted between two terrorist groups affiliated to ISIL in the city of al-Bukamal in the eastern countryside of the province, in which at least 4 terrorists were killed.
Local sources said that ISIL terrorists have executed two persons in al-Kasra and Sbeikhan towns in the countryside of Deir Ezzor.
Source: SANA
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[TownHall] Longtime Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz has been invited to speak at UC Berkeley by a pro-Israel student group and in typical fashion, he's getting push back.
During an interview with Fox and Friends Thursday morning, Dershowitz revealed the university allows pro-Palestinian speakers to come on campus essentially whenever they like, but require an eight week waiting period before pro-Israel speakers are allowed to participate in events. Further, Berkeley administrators have said he cannot speak there because he is a "high visibility person."
Now, he's threatening to sue.
Mr. Dershowitz retired from professing a few years ago. He can spend all his time on this, if that's what it takes.
"I've been invited to speak at Berkeley but Berkeley says I can't speak there because I'm a 'high visibility person' and if you're high visibility you have to give eight weeks notice unless you're invited by a department," Dershowitz said. "Now, here's the trick. Departments invite anti-Israel speakers all the time so they don't have to go through the eight week thing. But they don't invite pro-Israel speakers. So, we have the eight week barrier whereas anti-Israel speakers don't have the eight week barrier and I'm going to sue Berkeley if they don't allow me to speak and make me wait eight weeks while they allow anti-Israel speakers to come within three or four days. That's a lawsuit."
"They have to have a single standard and we're going to hold them in it," he continued. "If they don't abide by it we're going to take them to court."
[CNN] The Philippine military carried out offensives against an unknown armed group in an island in Lanao del Sur over 30 kilometers from beseiged Marawi City.
The military initiated air and water assaults in Balt Island in Bacolod-Kalawi town on Thursday morning against seven armed men who were spotted there on Wednesday. Balt Island is surrounded by Lanao Lake, a possible escape route for terrorists who have been holed up in Marawi for over four months.
The armed men, who were discovered with motorboats, could possibly be bringing reinforcements for the remaining Maute fighters, Joint Task Group Ranao Deputy Commander Romeo Brawner said.
This is not the first time armed men were spotted outside of Marawi. Military and local government officials said the presence of 20 armed men sparked tension among residents of Bayang, a quiet lakeside town around 50 kilometers south of Marawi City on September 20 and 23. There was a brief exchange of gunfire on September 20.
The military is optimistic the firefight in Marawi City will end within 15 days, while Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana sees an even earlier end to it.
[Daily Caller] A company whose president is "best friends" with Chelsea Clinton received more than $11 million in contracts over the last decade from a highly secretive Department of Defense think tank, but to date, the group lacks official federal approval to handle classified materials, according to sensitive documents TheDCNF was allowed to review.
Jacqueline Newmyer, the president of a company called the Long Term Strategy Group, has over the last 10 years received numerous Defense Department contracts from a secretive think tank called Office of Net Assessment.
The Office of Net Assessment is so sensitive, the specialized think tank is housed in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and reports directly to the secretary.
To date, the Long Term Strategy Group has received $11.2 million in contracts, according to USAspending,gov, a government database of federal contracts.
But after winning a decade of contracts from the Office of Net Assessment, the federal agency is only now in the process of granting clearance to the company. Long Term Strategy Group never operated a secure room on their premises to handle classified materials, according to the Defense Security Service, a federal agency that approves secure rooms inside private sector firms. Long Term Strategy Group operates offices in Washington, D.C., and Cambridge, Mass.
"The Long Term Strategy Group is currently in process for a facility clearance with the Defense Security Service," the agency informed TheDCNF in an email.
Newmyer declined to address her company’s lack of facilities to handle classified material. "With regard to your questions about the status of our facilities, those are best directed to the US government, which has authority over such matters," she wrote in an email to TheDCNF.
She also declined to say whether her company is footing the bill for the new secure facility, or if the taxpayers are footing the bill through the Office of Net Assessment.
Adam Lovinger, a whistleblower and 12-year Office of Net Assessment (ONA) veteran, has repeatedly warned ONA’s leadership they faced risks by relying on outside contractors as well as the problem of cronyism and a growing "revolving door" policy, where ONA employees would leave the defense think tank and join private contractors to do the same work.
Immigration officials on Thursday announced hundreds of arrests in an operation targeting communities where police and elected officials have refused to fully cooperate on enforcing federal immigration laws.
ICE said it arrested 167 people in and around Los Angeles, a region in which several cities and counties have been tagged by justice officials as being so-called sanctuaries ‐ a loosely defined term used to describe local governments that restrict police from assisting immigration authorities identify and detain people suspected of being in the country illegally.
Arrests were also made in San Francisco and San Jose. Overall, ICE said it arrested nearly 500 people across the country over the last few days.
The surge of arrests was similar in size to several past operations ICE has carried out in recent years. But the focus on places deemed by justice officials to be soft on illegal immigration served to ratchet up an already tense standoff. Good
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/29/2017
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#1
Urban clustering of illegals makes the ICE job considerably easier.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
09/29/2017 10:24
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we could use them in the small towns of the Western USA where the illegals are still way out of control, breeding like rats and skewing the crime statistics
1) Thanks for dressing up for the foto.
2) Mao was a librarian by trade.
[Circa] A school librarian in Cambridge, Massachusetts, rejected a shipment of books that was donated by first lady Melania Trump, according to CBS Boston.
CBS Boston on Wednesday reported that Liz "Liz The Librarian"
Phipps Soeiro of Cambridgeport Elementary School turned down the works Trump intended to send.
The White House chose one school in all 50 states to receive a package of 10 books authored by children’s literary author Dr. Seuss.
The initiative was meant to promote education and childhood literacy as part of National Read A Book Day.
Soeiro on Tuesday penned an editorial for the Horn Book’s Family Reading blog explaining why her school did not need the donation.
"My students have access to a school library with over nine thousand volumes and a librarian with a graduate degree in literary science," she wrote.
"Multiple studies show that schools with professionally staffed libraries improve student performance," Soeiro added.
*shrug* So send it to a school whose librarian will appreciate $200 worth of apolitical books added to the shelves, since Ms Soeiro's budget is clearly adequate to her students' reading needs.
Some Twitter users on Thursday criticized Soerio’s decision, while others praised the school librarian instead. Here's a photo of the li'l darling. Notice the backdrops.:
Posted by: Vast Right Wing Conspiracy ||
09/29/2017
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#1
I loved "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish." Not quite as existential as "Green Eggs and Ham", but still a classic. And much more fun than Principia Mathematica, which I assume is what Ms. Professional Librarian feeds the little Cambridge tykes.
While Dr. Seuss himself might be both patriarchal and possibly Juicish, I can't believe there aren't some little kids in Cambridge that would love to have their own copy.
#3
....the university made even more money off the chump. Sort of like those 100 dollar car washes and unnecessary marks up the car dealers add to high demand vehicles at signing time.
#5
Liz won't take the books from Trump,
She would rather place them in the dump.
She love Obama as we all can see,
But she looks like she was hit by the Ugly Tree
( Said Sam I Am)
[Hurriyet] President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called on the United States to exchange Pennsylvania-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen with Pastor Andrew Brunson, who has been in jail in Turkey since October 2016.
"We have given you all the documents necessary [for the extradition of Gülen]. But they say, ‘give us the pastor.' You have another pastor in your hands. Give us that pastor and we will do what we can in the judiciary to give you this one," Erdoğan said on Sept. 28.
Brunson was taken into custody on Oct. 7, 2016 on suspicion of "being a threat to national security," while Gülen is said to be the mastermind of the July 2016 coup attempt.
Erdoğan did not detail when or to whom he made this proposal. His last meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump took place on Sept. 21 in New York.
Brunson was sent to the immigration authority for deportation with his wife Norine Lyn Brunson following his detention on Oct. 7, but he was arrested after the release of his wife.
It was reported in May 2017 that Trump expressed Washington's demand for the release of Brunson.
"They say, ‘don't get involved with him.' How come? You say you have a judiciary, do you think we don't? Anyway, the one that we have [in our hands] is being tried, the one you have [in your hands] is not being tried. It is easier for you to give," Erdoğan said.
Trump's friendly words for Erdogan were interpreted as weakness.
The big news isn't the blackmail itself but the fact that Erdogan is blackmailing the US in public.
The Trump admin can now choose between a deeply humiliating submission to Erdogan and great harm coming to an innocent American hostage.
As always this is not between the US and Turkey exclusively. Global players will observe and draw conclusions leading to global repercussions.
Posted by: Elmerert Hupens2660 ||
09/29/2017
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#1
I have been following status of christian pastor Andrew Brunson on Jay Sekulow.
There are no legitimate charges against Andrew.
Andrews arrest has nothing to do with security, but has everything to do with Erdogan's Islamic religious intolerance and extremism toward christians.
Since the invasion of Iraq Erdogan has been driving anti-american sentiment in Turkey and using this anti-american sentiment as well as anti-gulenism and anti Kurdish sentiment to gain dictatorial power and take over Turkey.
At the time Erdogan issued a condemnation. But a Turkish justice ministry official said that "Missionary work is even more dangerous than terrorism and unfortunately is not considered a crime in Turkey."
The official Turkish position in 2017 apparently is much better reflected by the latter statement rather than the former.
[GatewayPundit] Why is Tillerson’s State Department and Sessions’ DOJ protecting Hillary Clinton?
Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch announced Thursday that a federal judge will personally review, on camera, redacted material from Hillary Clinton’s emails during her time as Secretary of State.
Via Judicial Watch:
Judicial Watch announced today that a federal judge will personally review, in camera, redacted material from emails discussing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of iPads and iPhones during her tenure at the State Department. Judge Kollar-Kotelly also ordered the State Department to file an affidavit addressing why it should not have to search new Clinton emails recovered. In taking these steps, the court rejected arguments by the Tillerson State Department and its lawyers at the Sessions Justice Department.
The court will review the blacked-out information so as to better ascertain whether the government misconduct exception would require the release of the full emails. Generally speaking, the government misconduct exception prevents government agencies from withholding information that would shed light on government wrongdoing under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
President of Judicial Watch Tom Fitton had this to say of having to fight Sessions’ DOJ for information on Hillary’s emails:
"Hillary Clinton knowingly used an unsecure email system and risky iPads and smartphones to conduct classified and sensitive government business. It is frankly outrageous that Secretary Tillerson and Attorney General Sessions allow their agencies to cover up for and defend Hillary Clinton’s scandalous and potentially criminal conduct."
As previously reported Sessions’ DOJ is blocking Judicial Watch from Hillary’s emails just like the previous administration did.
"The Trump State Department and the Trump Justice Department sent the same lawyers into this judge to make the same arguments that had been made for four years during the Obama years, that we’ve already searched and we are not going to search anymore," Judge Napolitano said during an appearance on FOX Business.
U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled that the State Department didn’t do enough to investigate areas of email between Hillary Clinton and her personal aides.
"There has been no substantial change whatsoever in the Rex Tillerson State Department or the Jeff Sessions Justice Department about Mrs. Clinton’s emails and an Obama appointee to the bench said, ’I’m not buying this argument, you’re going to look for those emails.’ This is the world turned upside down," he said.
Thank God for Judicial Watch and their relentless fight against the Deep State operatives fighting from the shadows.
[LATimes] In February 2013, Americans watched in horror as a disgruntled former Los Angeles police officer, Christopher Dorner, terrorized Southern California. Over nine days, Dorner killed four people and wounded three others during a mass manhunt.
As police investigated, they wondered why nearby residents weren’t reporting the shots. It turned out that, in an effort to conceal his murders, Dorner was using a silencer, which distorts the sound of gunfire and masks the muzzle flash of a gun. (Silencers do not completely silence gunfire, as some Hollywood movies would have you believe.) In expert hands, say SEAL Team Six, silencers have been used to help covertly take down the likes of Osama bin Laden. But in the hands of criminals, like Christopher Dorner, they pose a serious threat to law enforcement and the communities they serve. Silencers, like everything else government regulated, are not in widespread, or even general use by the criminal class. And as the writer said, the gun shots are not completely silenced. A trained man, which Kops certainly are, will take no more than two shots to locate a sniper using a suppressor. Less for someone in the open.
Now Congress is trying to sneak a measure into an unrelated bill that would make it easier for criminals to obtain this special equipment. The bill, the Sportsmen’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement (SHARE) Act, which will soon be voted on in the House of Representatives, would roll back an 80-year-old law that carefully regulates the sale of silencers.
Shortly after 1930, when 307 law enforcement officers were killed in a single year, Congress passed the National Firearms Act (NFA) to help regulate some of our nation’s most dangerous weapons, including machine guns and sawed-off shotguns. The bill also required gun owners to register their silencers, which has helped keep them in the hands of law-abiding gun owners and out of criminal activity.
The SHARE Act would gut the existing regulatory system, making gun silencers readily available without a background check.
The process for purchasing a silencer is relatively simple. Today, gun owners with a clean criminal record can get a silencer with less paperwork than buying a refrigerator, according to the makers of silencers. Background checks and fees. Not what a free individual should have to go through to possess a firearm accessory.
If passed, the SHARE Act would gut the existing regulatory system, making silencers readily available without a background check through unlicensed sales at gun shows and on the Internet. The NFA should be repealed in its entirety as it is and has been used as a gross violation of civil liberties.
The SHARE Act would also make it harder for civilians and law enforcement to locate active shooters. Silencers degrade the effectiveness of gunshot detection technology that cities including San Francisco, Oakland and San Diego have deployed to reduce violence. When bullets start flying, seconds count. That’s why it’s so important for bystanders and law enforcement to be able to determine where they are coming from. This bill will only make it harder. The writer wants readers to believe that only criminals and evildoers would use suppressors.
Perhaps even worse, the SHARE Act includes language that would allow the transfer of silencers across state lines and their sale to individuals as young as 18. Dealers would not have to report multiple purchases to law enforcement, even though multiple-sale reports are the primary intelligence tool that federal law enforcement uses to identify firearms trafficking organizations. People trafficking in large numbers of firearms crossing state lines are not getting their firearms from gun shops. It is just logic. This is a massive hole in the writer's logic. If I were to get into gun running, the last place I would go for product for resale would be gun shops. I would buy stolen or smuggled firearms for resale.
There are only two groups who will benefit from the deregulation of silencers: those who wish to inflict harm on our communities, and the corporate gun lobby, which stands to make a fortune. Making purchasers of suppressors criminals before a crime has been committed.
Now that President Obama is no longer in office and gun sales have plummeted, gun lobbyists have been forced to look for new ways to generate revenue. With the average silencer costing about $1,000, it’s not hard to see their motives. They’ve even teamed up with Donald Trump Jr. in the hopes that more silencers will help get “little kids into the game.” Yes, he actually said that. This bill isn’t about public safety or sportsmanship; it’s about profit. Uhh. Gun sales have not plummeted. Prices have. I can show my work, too. Also, if gun sales have plummeted, according to the writer, what makes him think suppressor sales would replace them? I always have said that the general public, within six months of this bill being signed into law, will 1) Realize that having a suppressor comes with its own unique problems, and may well not be worth the $1k price tag, and 2) Realize that all the effort expended to deregulate a firearms accessory could have been put to better use deregulating the firearms transfer scheme we have now. I would hate to be a congressman of either party when that happens.
The bill isn’t just bad policy, it’s bad politics, too. A new poll of 2018 voters in California swing districts found that an overwhelming majority — 76%, including 65% of Trump voters — are opposed to deregulating silencers. They are joined by law enforcement officials and gun-safety advocates across the country who believe that deregulating silencers would hurt public safety. A state with the most draconian gun laws inside the borders of the USA.
Although there’s far more gun violence than Americans on either side of the aisle would like, the fate of this bill will be decided by Republicans in places like California. (Republicans in red states will vote in lockstep.) Seven Golden State Republicans currently represent districts won by Hillary Clinton. Voters in those districts don’t share the extreme views of the gun lobby’s leaders. They simply want reasonable policy that makes California communities safer.
In politics, elected officials are often faced with decisions that require them to choose between political expediency and the public interest. This is not one of those times. When it comes to deregulating silencers, the smart thing politically is to do the right thing.
Peter Ambler is executive director of Americans for Responsible Solutions, the gun violence prevention organization founded by former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
#2
Silencers are totes quiet, even negative decibals, quieting everything in their vicinity. I know, cuz I saw it on the TeeVee
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/29/2017 7:46
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They aren't silencers. They are suppressors. Only knock down the noise by some 22-30Db. Basically think of wearing ear plugs. Still noisy as fuck for most firearms.
Now, mix a suppressor with a subsonic round, different story. Isn't like Hollystupid where you just get a pppphhhffft. Still makes noise from the shot and the mechanical action of the pistol. But you definitely don't hear it as far. Trade off is power loss so you got to get close and may have to use multiple rounds to drop your target.
[PhilStar] Philippine security forces are pursuing the Abu Sayyaf rebels who abducted a town councilor of Jolo in the town of Indanan, Sulu. Brig. General Cirilito Sobejana identified the Abu Sayyaf's latest captive as Zed Tan, Jolo councilor and nephew of former Sulu governor Sakur Tan.
Police said Councilor Tan was seized by an undetermined number of Abu Sayyaf militants on Wednesday evening in Indanan town. The victim was in his service vehicle when he was taken at gunpoint. The gunmen forced Tan into a getaway vehicle and escaped in the direction of Talipao town.
Tan's abduction raises the number of Abu Sayyaf captives in Sulu to 17 — including six Vietnamese, five Indonesians, a Dutch national, and five Filipinos.
Posted by: ryuge ||
09/29/2017
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[DAWN] Russian President Vladimir Putin ...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. 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 Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead... on Thursday meets his Ottoman Turkish counterpart Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him... for talks on Syria and a key weapons deal, hoping to strengthen an increasingly active relationship that has troubled the West.
Despite a regional rivalry that goes back to the Ottoman Empire and the Romanov dynasty, Russia and The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... have been working closely since a 2016 reconciliation ended a crisis caused by the shooting down of a Russian war plane over Syria.
"Russia and Turkey are cooperating very tightly," Putin's front man Dmitry Peskov said ahead of the one-day working visit by Putin to Ankara.
The two will hold a working dinner before a one-on-one meeting and a presser at 9:30 pm at Erdogan's palace, the Ottoman Turkish presidency said on its website.
Turkey and Russia have been on opposing sides during the more than six years of war in Syria, with Russia the key backer of Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Oppressor of the Syrians and the Lebs... and Turkey supporting rebels seeking his ouster.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/29/2017
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[AlAhram] Egypt's air force foiled an attempt by "criminal elements'' to illegally enter the country via the western border, the armed forces announced on Thursday.
Air forces acting on intelligence reports launched a mission on the Egyptian-Libyan border, targeting and destroying 10 4x4 vehicles carrying weapons, ammunition and smuggled materials.
Army forces are currently in pursuit to arrest the criminal elements, according to a statement by the army’s front man.
Egypt's border with Libya has been the site of arms smuggling, bad boy activity, and crossing by irregular migrants colonists, since the fall of the Qadaffy regime in 2011.
[AlAhram] Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... 's plans to float state oil titan Aramco are prompting the country to think the unthinkable.
Late last year, Saudi Arabia tried to get fellow oil producers around the world to agree to reduce production. Before an OPEC meeting in Vienna in November, Saudi officials were armed with an unprecedented bargaining chip: if there was no deal, the kingdom would quit the exporter group altogether.
Continued on Page 49
[Victory Girls] The Washington Post recently wrote a story on the Imran Awan IT scandal plaguing Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Rep. Andre Carson, and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. The Post concluded that even though massive amounts of data were accessed and moved around, this entire kerfuffle doesn’t rise to the level of espionage. In other words, Nothing To See Here. Move Along. Oh REALLY?
Sorry Charlie ....errr WaPo! Your long winded attempt to gloss over the facts and realities of what Imran, his wife Hina Alvi, and the rest of that merry band has done might curry favor with the Democrats, but won’t win kudos elsewhere. Especially since the the blame has shifted to pointing the finger at the lax IT security protocols within Congress.
The WaPo ignores the very problematic wire transfers, glosses over the strange equipment purchases, excuses the fact that family members overlapped their job duties against the rules, and completely ignores the fact that $100,000 was sent by a known Hezbollah sympathizer to the Awans. According to the Post, the $283,000 wired to Pakistan was to pay for his father’s funeral! That’s one helluva send off!
Yes, this is definitely more than just a bit of bank fraud.
While the WaPo spins on behalf of it’s Democrat buddies, let’s take a closer look at those massive amounts of data transfer shall we? We are, as reported by Daily Caller’s Luke Rosiak, looking at TERABITS of data! Imran and his crew accessed the House server 5,700 times and funneled tons of data off the server. 5,7000 times! Yet the excuse that the WaPo is helping promote?
#1
A lot of needles could have been hidden in a terabyte sized data haystack that Awan barfed into the congressional it infrastructure.
There could have been infected pictures or documents that exploited subtle vulnerabilities of OS & application software that Awan installed in PCs.
It would be the computer equivalent of a binary weapon. The data and the software would look ok to the casual observer and be harmless until they were brought together.
Also, a LOT of data can be steganographically hidden in a terabyte blob. When the blob was retransmitted to Awan's sensitive stolen data could have been hidden well enough not to trigger any automated security system sniffing outgoing traffic.
The reasonable assumption should be that whatever deep dark secret was stored on these PCs is in the possession of the ISI, the Chinese and the Norks.
[DefenseSystems] Drones "need to react quickly to moving objects in uneven lighting conditions. Conventional video cameras are too slow and specialized high-frame rate cameras produce too much data to process in real time," said a spokesperson from iniLabs, an industry collaborator.
To solve this problem, the newly developed Dynamic Vision Sensor (DVS) technology mimics the human eye’s ability to focus on specific areas that have low-light intensity, according to David Scaramuzza, Director of the Robotics Perception Group at the University of Zurich.
In order to devote extra processing power to the darker frame areas, the DVS technology does not constantly update the entire image frame. Instead, it relies on stored memories of the unchanged parts of the frame and matches them with the highly-focused input from the low-light areas to complete the view.
"Instead of wastefully sending entire images at fixed frame rates, only the local pixel-level changes cause by movement in a scene are transmitted," explained Scaramuzza.
The ability to "see" in the dark is an important component of developing non-GPS reliant drones.
"Small, low-cost unmanned aircraft rely heavily on tele-operators and GPS, " explained JC Ledé, Program Manager for the Fast Lightweight Autonomy program at DARPA. However, GPS signals are susceptible to jamming and disruption. As a result, DARPA, industry developers, and research teams are working on alternative methods for position, timing, and navigation (PNT), including ways to "see" in the dark. Rods, cones and Hellfires.
Posted by: Vast Right Wing Conspiracy ||
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This seems to me to just be image compression at the camera end.
[DAWN] Four people, including two women, were booked on blasphemy charges in Jamshoro on Thursday for solemnising a marriage under what is known as "Shariat-e-Latifi" (the Code of Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai) police told Dawn.
Khanot police lodged first information report (FIR) No. 22/17 under Section 295-A of the Pakistain Penal Code (PPC) after a video clip surfaced showing a woman solemnising the marriage of a man and a woman under "Shariat-e-Latifi".
Section 295-A of the PPC deals with "deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting Its religion or religious beliefs."
It says: "Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the 'religious feelings of any class of the citizens of Pakistain, by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representations insults the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, or with fine, or with both."
In the video, the bride's father, invites the first woman to solemnise the marriage. "[She] will perform nikkah of my daughter while reciting Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai’s poetry. This will be the first nikkah which will be performed on the basis of ’Shariat-e-Latifi’ and in the Sindhi language," the clip showed the father as saying.
"This nikkah will be recited with the name and prayers of those daughters of Sindh and heroes who have been fighting for the freedom [of Sindh]," he added.
The women who solemnised the marriage is said to have clarified her position on social media but refused to comment when contacted by Dawn.
Assistant Sub-Inspector (ASI) Bashir Ahmed Janwari in the FIR said that eight to 10 other unidentified people were also present at the ceremony.
The father of the bride was placed in durance vile Into the paddy wagon wit' yez! and remanded to 14 days in judicial custody by a court in Kotri today, while Senior Superintendent Police (SSP) Irfan Bahadur said the other accused in the case would also be arrested accordingly.
Sindhi intellectuals, on the other hand, condemned the case against the woman who solemnised the marriage and others.
The lawyer who offered to represent her before the Sindh High Court said she would move the court for bail. He also asked the state to take responsibility for her protection.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/29/2017
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Posted by: Fred ||
09/29/2017
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#1
Well, yeah, but it's the Chargers. They're most pathetic team in the NFL. On top of that they just moved in a childish little snit from their loyal fan base in San Diego to Los Angeles where they have no fans and never will because they're pathetic. The owner Dean Spanos is first rate jerk who deserves to lose the franchise. The Stub Hub, IIRC, seats only about 27,000. That's less than half the capacity of other NFL stadiums. That's why they call it the "Stub" Hub. And the Chargers cannot fill it. I'm thinking San Diego voters owe themselves a pat on the back for refusing to finance a new stadium for these clowns.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
09/29/2017 10:17
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[Ynet] Two Arab Israelis from Umm al-Fahm, who planned to join ISIS in Syria and frequently watched their videos on the internet, tossed in the clink Drop the rosco, Muggsy, or you're one with the ages! and indicted for plotting to carry out attack against security personnel and civilians emulating deadly July shooting on Temple Mount; third suspect arrested for possession of illegal firearm.
Two Arab Israeli supporters of ISIS were arrested earlier this month for planning to carry out a terror attack at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, while another ISIS supporter was arrested for possession of illegal weapons, it was cleared for publication Thursday.
According to the Shin Bet investigation, Sa'id Gasub Mahmoud Jabarin, 26 from Umm al-Fahm
...home of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, the Israeli offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood...
and a 16-year-old co-conspirator planned to carry out a shooting attack at the compound similar to that which had been perpetrated on July 14 which claimed the lives of two Israeli Border Police officers.
A third suspect, Faris Salah Mahmoud Mahajna, 24, was also arrested for possession of illegal firearms, including a Carl Gustav gun which was confiscated during a raid at his home.
Indictments were served against Jabarin and his 16-year-old partner at the District Court in Haifa for establishing contact with enemies in a time of war, contact with foreign agents and weapons offences.
During the investigation it emerged that the would-be attackers shared and supported ideas and ideology expounded by ISIS.
Following their investigation, the Shin Bet arrested more individuals also from Umm al-Fahm who were suspected of being involved in the illegal arms trade. During their arrest illegal weapons were confiscated.
"The picture that we received during the investigation shows us that a comparatively short time after the murderous attack in July 2017 on Temple Mount, two Umm al-Fahm residents planned a similar attack at the Temple Mount compound," said the Shin Bet in an official statement.
"The attack was prevented thanks to accurate intelligence information of the Shin Bet that enabled the arrests of members of a cell before they managed to execute the serious attack," the statement added.
According to their indictments, the two made contact with members of ISIS and planned to head to Syria to join the fighting taking place.
The defendants frequently visited websites affiliated with the terror organization and watched videos it disseminated, including those documenting its military activities.
In addition, the indictment details how they plotted to launch an attack near the al-Aqsa mosque against non-Moslem civilians and security forces.
They discussed, the indictment goes on, the possibility of carrying out a combined attack using a knife and a gun but decided only to use handguns after Jabarin provided the minor with a firearm and offered to train him how to shoot.
During one visit by the minor to the al-Aqsa mosque, he scouted the area for ideal spots to carry out the attack. He and Jabarin later decided that they would make their way to the compound on organized buses leaving Umm al-Fahm with the weapons strapped to their bodies.
They also agreed that they would carry out the attack in the morning in order to minimize the chances of accidentally harming Moslems.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/29/2017
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[DAWN] Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... police on Thursday claimed to have killed five 'terrorists' during a shootout in the Sachal area of the city.
Talking to the media, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Malir, Rao Anwar said that police had conducted an operation after receiving a tip-off from intelligence agencies. He said that the killed "terrorists" belonged to Al Qaeda and 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.... (IS) group.
The suspected snuffies were involved in bank robberies and murders of army and coppers, he said, adding that they had links with Saad Aziz, who was awarded death sentence for his involvement in Safoora Goth bus carnage and murder of prominent human rights ...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions... activist Sabeen Mahmud.
One of the "terrorists" was an engineer and "belonged to a good family", the officer said.
He also claimed to have tossed in the calaboose Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please! two snuffies during the operation.
Anwar said that police had recovered a remote control car along with three suicide jackets and weapons from the alleged murderous Moslems, adding that they were also "experts at building drones".
Posted by: Fred ||
09/29/2017
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[BALTIMORESUN] Extra security has been added near the statue of retired Ravens star Ray Lewis at M&T Bank Stadium after he joined current players Sunday in kneeling during the national anthem, provoking calls to remove the likeness. As of mid-afternoon Wednesday, more than 36,000 people had signed an online petition on change.org that advocates for the removal of the Lewis statue “because of his refusal to stand during the National Anthem.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/29/2017
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#3
Coppin State University Baltimore
Morgan State University Baltimore
Towson University
University of Baltimore Baltimore
University of Maryland, Baltimore
University of Maryland, Baltimore County Catonsville/Arbutus
Mass infect the above campuses with agitprop that "He was a Founding Father in blackface."
The SJW's won't know any better and the statue will be torn down within a week.
[Iraq News] The pro-government paramilitary troops have found a mass grave containing relics of Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... bandidosforces of Evil near Tal Afar town, west of djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... "While troops were combing the center and outskirts of Tal Afar, an IS mass grave was found near the military district in the town," Cap. Moussa Ali Joulak, an officer with al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces) told Anadolu Agency on Thursday.
"The grave includes relics of 40 members, most of whom were women and foreign bully boys," he added. "Some gravestones had foreign letters similar to Latin not English. Maybe they indicate names of Russian and Chechen murdered ones."
The gravestones, according to Joulak, show that their death was in the beginning and mid this year, most probably in Arclight airstrikes not during liberation offensives of Tal Afar.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/29/2017
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.