h/t instapundit
Maybe this is part of why Julia Salazar’s much-reported embellishments of her own background didn’t torpedo her campaign for State Senate in Brooklyn. Even articles reporting on her win last night led with the controversy over how she’s described her backstory: The New York Post condemned her personal story ‐ a big part of her appeal ‐ as "wildly exaggerated." Salazar has said she immigrated from Colombia when she was, in fact, born in Florida; asserted a "working-class background" that her brother strongly denied, offering photos of the family’s four-bedroom riverfront house; said she went to work at 14 to "make ends meet," which her mother contradicted; implied her mother hadn’t gone to college when her mother got a degree when Salazar was 8 years old; asserted a very confused timeline about her conversion to Judaism; and claimed Jewish ancestry nobody could verify.
There’s no interpretation of Salazar’s claims about her life that can escape the conclusion that she presented a selectively edited and lightly fabricated account of her personal history, and Rolling Stone seemed baffled to have to report last night that "the constituents of District 18 were apparently untroubled" by that. But I wonder if the supporters ‐ certainly the young, mostly white, recent college graduates who flooded her victory party ‐ didn’t recognize, at least subconsciously, that this kind of thing is just way more common than we’d like to admit.
h/t Instapundit
On last night's episode of The Ezra Levant Show, I reported on the media's reaction to the Chinese-Canadians expressing outrage over the murder of a teenage girl in their community by one of Trudeau's Syrian "refugees".
Mainstream media outlets pushed a pro-migrant narrative and shared videos promoting a Syrian led vigil for the murdered girl. But when the vigil failed to materialize ‐ and they were instead met by crowds of Chinese-Canadians demanding an answer from Trudeau ‐ the media didn't know how to respond.
[National Review] The progressive street is leading fossilized Democrats into a sort of collective madness.
The dinosaurs of the party desperately seek relevance by sounding crazier than the new unhinged base that disrupts Senate hearings, loudly pronounces a new socialist future, and envisions octogenarian Maxine Waters as more the future of the party than is septuagenarian Nancy Pelosi. The spectacle is right out of Euripides’s Bacchae, as the creaky old guard of the polis, Tiresias and Cadmus, dress up in trendy, ridiculous ritual costumes to stumble along after the racing and frenzied young maenads in their lethal courtship of suicidal Dionysian madness. Whoa, Victor! Some deplorables won't know what you're talking about. Me included.
Six-term senator Dianne Feinstein is running against a far more radical Democrat, Kevin de León, in California’s general election. (He added the accent and the "de" to his name in midlife, thereby enhancing his ethnic authenticity.) Feinstein’s current Senate colleague, the junior senator Kamala Harris, has been interrupting, sermonizing, and shouting at the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings in a fashion that generates the media buzz and attention usually reserved for supposedly sober and judicious old hands like Feinstein.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/18/2018
10:25 ||
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#1
Thanks for posting VDH.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
09/18/2018 12:12
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#2
You don't believe me that a bloody civil war is soon upon us? They will burn the house down for power, or whatever is left over.
State Department on Hidden Cam, “Resist Everything,” “I Have Nothing to Lose”
Federal Employee for State Department: “Resist everything… Every level. F**k sh*t up.”
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Embedded in Federal Government Positions, Actively Resisting
Stuart Karaffa Does Work for DSA While on Taxpayer’s Dime: “I’m careful about it. I don’t leave a paper trail.”
“I have nothing to lose. It’s impossible to fire federal employees.”
Ethics Officer Fails to Recognize Breach on Ethics Form: “somebody just rubber stamps it and it goes forward…”
The investigation took more than a year, according to James O’Keefe, which suggests there will be more than a few videos released. Interesting times, indeed.
[WaPo]Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh and the woman who has accused him of sexually assaulting her decades ago will testify publicly before the Senate on Monday, setting up a potentially dramatic and politically perilous hearing that could determine the fate of his nomination. The WaPo article is timestamped 10:53 pm, yet the local Dallas News managed to hold the presses and get this on the front page, delivered at 7 am.
"I have never done anything like what the accuser describes ‐ to her or to anyone," he said in a statement. "Because this never happened, I had no idea who was making this accusation until she identified herself yesterday."
Yet his denials only prompted further questions. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said that Kavanaugh had told him that he was not present at the party in question ‐ which prompted some to wonder how Kavanaugh could make such a claim given that Ford had never specified the exact date or location of the gathering. The same way I could testify I was not there, without knowing the date or location. ...30-odd years ago. Unexpectedly Soon after Grassley announced the hearing, Democrats began to protest his decision, insisting instead that the FBI reopen his background check investigation rather than going ahead with a full-fledged public airing of the accusation.
"If there's a hearing before that investigation, the committee is going to be shooting in the dark with questions," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the committee. "As a former prosecutor and state attorney general, there's no way I would put a crime survivor on the stand in front of a jury, let alone the American people, without a full investigation so that I know what the facts are before I start asking questions." Crime survivor? So the Judge is already guilty?
In a statement Monday, the Justice Department signaled that the FBI doesn't plan on re-opening Kavanaugh's background check for now ‐ noting that it forwarded information about Ford's allegation to the White House, consistent with federal guidelines.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/18/2018
08:44 ||
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#1
So the Judge is already guilty?
98% of what you'll hear and see - Yes
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
09/18/2018 9:58
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#3
Fine... Now only *womyn* are eligible for judgeships ... I wonders if Kavanaugh discovered his "inner female" would "she" (after the gender change) then get a free pass as well?
#4
How could the FBI or anyone do an investigation?
Professor Ford can't provide the date of the incident or the location of the incident nor any witnesses nor any people to whom she provided information contemporaneously to the incident.
I guess that's the point. No vote without an investigation and no investigation is possible, thus no vote.
Posted by: lord garth ||
09/18/2018 12:43
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#5
which prompted some to wonder how Kavanaugh could make such a claim given that Ford had never specified the exact date or location of the gathering.
#10
She needs to be careful when she gives a date. He just might be able to prove he was not there....
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
09/18/2018 15:07
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#11
"I don't remember a date, Senator Feinstein. I only remember that face - that terrible face - looming over me, trying to cut off my very breath. It was 1982. I think."
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/18/2018 15:13
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#12
Tell DiFi to Foad and get out of the way. Enough alinsky lynching tactics.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/18/2018 16:54
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#15
When I lived in the U.S. I was told to never be alone in an elevator with a woman.
Seems that's not good enough anymore.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
09/18/2018 19:15
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#16
When I lived in the U.S. I was told to never be alone in an elevator with a woman.
When was that, European Conservative? I’ve never been given advice like that, though Mr. Wife did joke about avoiding Saudi coffee shops, back when he travelled in that part of the world.
Like Anita Hill the accursor is a lawyer. More likely to anticipate and handle questions without going off script.
They will not give details for the ability to counter by Kavanaugh with investigators or witnesses.
They only want him not confirmed. So they will focus on his behavior but mostly on her emotional impact from the allleged incident. Wait for the ‘if he only apologized’....
#22
Btw I take accusations like that very seriously. This would have been a felony.
But to come forward and say: He did that to me but I can't tell you when and where, this means the accused person has no means to defend himself.
This is "Someone must have slandered K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.”
Posted by: European Conservative ||
09/18/2018 21:23
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#23
Denied his permission to stay,
But under arrest, declared K.,
"I could sure use a hug...
If I wasn't a bug!"
"Sorry, son, this just isn't your day."
#27
They want the FBI to investigate the alleged assault. How do you do that? The only "witness" she can name says nothing like this ever happened. Without time and location, what's there to investigate?
This means you could actually slander anyone with impunity, ruin his career, without having to face any consequences. The accused has no means to defend himself, the accuser could never be proven wrong, and as the Romans said: aliquid semper haeret (something always sticks).
Posted by: European Conservative ||
09/18/2018 22:58
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[The Intercept] THE U.S. GOVERNMENT can monitor journalists under a foreign intelligence law that allows invasive spying and operates outside the traditional court system, according to newly released documents. For the media outlets we do not control, our theme must remain... 'we come as friends, the Russians and Donald Trump are your real enemies.'
Targeting members of the press under the law, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, requires approval from the Justice Department’s highest-ranking officials, the documents show.
In two 2015 memos for the FBI, the attorney general spells out "procedures for processing Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications targeting known media entities or known members of the media." The guidelines say the attorney general, the deputy attorney general, or their delegate must sign off before the bureau can bring an application to the secretive panel of judges who approves monitoring under the 1978 act, which governs intelligence-related wiretapping and other surveillance carried out domestically and against U.S. persons abroad.
The high level of supervision points to the controversy around targeting members of the media at all. Prior to the release of these documents, little was known about the use of FISA court orders against journalists. Previous attention had been focused on the use of National Security Letters against members of the press; the letters are administrative orders with which the FBI can obtain certain phone and financial records without a judge’s oversight. FISA court orders can authorize much more invasive searches and collection, including the content of communications, and do so through hearings conducted in secret and outside the sort of adversarial judicial process that allows journalists and other targets of regular criminal warrants to eventually challenge their validity.
"This is a huge surprise," said Victoria Baranetsky, general counsel with the Center for Investigative Reporting, previously of Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press. "It makes me wonder, what other rules are out there, and how have these rules been applied? The next step is figuring out how this has been used." "This is a huge surprise." Quite obviously Victory doesn't read the Burg.
The documents were turned over by the Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy to the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Knight First Amendment Institute as part of an ongoing lawsuit seeking the Trump administration’s rules for when and how the government can spy on journalists, including during leak investigations. Freedom of the Press and Knight shared the documents with The Intercept. (First Look Media, The Intercept’s parent company, provides funding for both organizations, and multiple Intercept staffers serve on the board of Freedom of the Press Foundation.)
The memos discussing FISA are dated in early 2015, and both are directed at the FBI’s National Security Division. The documents are on the same subject and outline some of the same steps for FISA approvals, but one is unclassified and mostly unredacted, while the other is marked secret and largely redacted. The rules apply to media entities or journalists who are thought to be agents of a foreign government, or, in some cases, are of interest under the broader standard that they possess foreign intelligence information.
#1
This is news? The only reason no one objected before was someone else was in the White House. Now they go paranoid? I guess that 'enemy of the people' woke you?
[WSJ] The Salem witch trials turned on what was called "spectral evidence." That was testimony from witnesses‐either malicious or hysterical‐who claimed the accused had assumed the form of a black cat or some other devilish creature and had come visiting in the night in order to torment the witness with bites and scratches, or to rearrange the bedroom furniture, or to send the baby into paroxysms.
Susannah Sheldon, aged about 18, testified that the defendant Sarah Good’s apparition‐not the actual Sarah Good, but her spirit, her specter‐"most violently pulled down my head behind a chest and tied my hands together with a whale band and almost choked me to death." Other witnesses blamed Good for the mysterious deaths of cows or for causing a broom to fly up into an apple tree.
The judge, William Stoughton, admitted this nonsense into evidence. Hysterical fantasies had real consequences: Sarah Good and four other defendants were hanged on July 19, 1692.
Continued on Page 49
[Wash Times] Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden assailed President Trump’s supporters during a speech Saturday at the annual Human Rights Campaign dinner in Washington, lamenting that "virulent people" and the "dregs of society" still had a friend in the White House.
Mr. Biden told an enthusiastic crowd of LGBTQ rights advocates that social conservatives at home and abroad who used religion or culture as a "license to discriminate" were committing a "crime" of prejudice.
"Despite losing in the courts and in the court of public opinion, these forces of intolerance remain determined to undermine and roll back the progress you all have made," he argued. "This time they ‐ not you ‐ have an ally in the White House.
"They’re a small percentage of the American people, virulent people," he continued. "Some of them the dregs of society. And instead of using the full might of the executive branch to secure justice, dignity [and] safety for all, the president uses the White House as a literal, literal bully pulpit, callously exerting his power over those who have little or none."
#1
Who did he plagiarize this speech from? Hillary?
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/18/2018 7:32
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Despite losing in the courts and in the court of public opinion,
Last time I checked, the public, in the form of a referendum in CA, blocked gay marriage. Then the unelected sit for life judiciary decided the voice of the people was to be shut down and their fiat, which had no legal basis in the written Constitution, was to take precedent.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
[Isn't it amazing how some elements of the Constitution expand under 'interpretation' and others disappear altogether]
#4
I haven't been so pleased to be numbered among the "dregs of society" since I also was pleased to belong to the ONLY branch of the US Military Service which was founded in a bar ( Tun's Tavern).
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has nearly doubled promotions of top American diplomats as he seeks to restore diplomatic ties with a workforce alienated by his predecessor, Rex Tillerson.
Since taking over in April, Pompeo has lavished attention on diplomats demoralized by the former oil executive’s distant management style, reluctance to consult in-house experts and inability to get personnel choices through President Donald Trump’s White House.
The charm offensive by the former Republican lawmaker and CIA director includes resuming the hiring of diplomats’ family members when posted abroad, cheerleading emails to staff about his travels and a push to replenish the top ranks of U.S. diplomacy, officials said.
The most tangible sign of Pompeo’s effort may be the State Department promotion lists, disclosed internally since Aug. 31 and reviewed by Reuters, which show Pompeo has sharply increased the number of diplomats promoted to three of the top four ranks.
According to a provisional agency document circulated internally on Friday, Pompeo recommended doubling the number of "career ministers" - the second-highest rank in the U.S. foreign service - to eight from four. (tmsnrt.rs/2xcHMTc)
Pompeo also proposed nearly doubling those promoted to the third rank, "minister-counselor," to 68 from 35 the year before.
#5
One does hope none of those promoted to the level where President Trump can simply demand their resignation will subsequently turn up in the Beitbart investigation or that of Project Veritas...
[Breitbart] Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page admitted under oath that a text exchange with FBI agent Peter Strzok meant that "it still existed in the scope of possibility that there would be literally nothing" to the Russia collusion story on the eve of Robert Mueller’s appointment to investigate that issue as special counsel, according to a Sunday Fox News report.
In July, Page and Strzok were called to testify before a joint session of the House Judiciary and House Oversight Committees about their text exchanges.
According to the report by Justice Department Inspector General (DOJ-IG) Michael Horowitz in May 2017, Strzok texted Page to let her know he was considering joining Mueller’s investigation, which was just beginning. He told her he wanted to join to "fix it" after the Clinton mail investigation and complete "unfinished business," stating he was willing to forgo an assistant directorship to be part of "[a]n investigation leading to impeachment." But Strzok still had reservations about joining Mueller. As the DOJ-IG report puts it:
#2
It's not going to happen TW. Socialist memes now pervade our society. Things are fine now - enjoy your years.
Due to the pervasive indoctrination of (incoherent) leftism in schools, as well as the gradual die off of all the rational and reasonable folks, it means that the US, and the world, will go full Venezuela in a short period.
[Breitbart] It was mid-May, about six weeks after Trump appointee Mari Stull began her new job as senior adviser at the State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs.
As senior adviser at the bureau, Stull was in charge of making sure President Trump’s agenda was represented at the many international organizations the U.S. participates in and mostly funds, such as the United Nations and its various agencies.
Stull and her boss, Amb. Kevin Moley, had just left for a trip to Geneva for the World Health Assembly. Back at the State Department, Erin Barclay, a senior career diplomat at the IO Bureau, invited more than ten civil servants within the bureau to a lunch meeting.
At the meeting, Molly Phee, another senior career diplomat, went around the table and asked each civil servant for complaints about Stull and took notes. Another senior career diplomat in the IO bureau, Nerissa Cook, was also there. One civil servant who participated in the meeting would later say the meeting felt uncomfortable, and that there was pressure to say something.
Several weeks later, the first hit piece against Stull ran in an exclusive Foreign Policy report. The June 13 piece alleged that Stull was "vetting" U.S. employees at the State Department and at the United Nations to determine whether they were "loyal" to President Trump.
The piece also alleged Stull had a "highly secretive management style," had emerged as the most "dominant force" in the bureau, had required that she review new directives from the office before they went out, and that she was stripping references to "international law" and "international order" from action items and memos.
Not one source was named in the piece, which cited the allegations from "nearly a dozen" anonymous "current and former U.S. officials." The piece did, however, mention three deputy assistant secretaries of state in the bureau: Phee, Barclay, and Cook, who were said to be leaving to other positions at State.
After the article published, three top Democrats ‐ Sen. Bob Menendez (NJ), Rep. Eliot Engel (NY), and Elijah Cummings (MD) ‐ then sent a letter dated June 19 to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo citing the article and demanding documents related to Stull and her alleged vetting of employees’ loyalty.
Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan then launched an investigation into whether Stull had been vetting employees for loyalty, according to a source.
Some officials now believe the meeting was to collect ammunition to be leaked to Foreign Policy. At least several civil servants who participated in the meeting are now planning to file a complaint against Phee for putting them on the spot and making them gripe about Stull, according to the source.
The episode reveals what some officials and outside observers believe is a concerted leak campaign to force out a Trump appointee at a bureau that has seen results in the implementation of Trump’s policies.
Leaks like these from what has become known as "the Deep State" have plagued the Trump administration since it took office.
Most operators in the Deep State ‐ a loosely connected group of holdovers from the Obama administration, Republican appointees who disagree with Trump’s agenda, as well as several of the 2.8 million career government employees working throughout the federal bureaucracy ‐ have operated with near impunity, facing no consequences for their actions.
They remain anonymous, like the author of a recent op-ed in the New York Times, and have been aggressive ‐ wiping out many of the president’s appointees. Breitbart News, through this exclusive report, is exposing just a sliver of how these leakers maneuver ‐ naming names and detailing the process through which they engage in their anti-Trump attacks.
When queried about the leaks, a State Department spokesperson told Breitbart News "the unauthorized release of information, whether it’s classified or not, is always a concern of the State Department."
"The Bureau of Diplomatic Security takes the lead on investigating potential instances of improper disclosure of classified and sensitive information. We do not comment on ongoing investigations."
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/18/2018 8:27
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"The Bureau of Diplomatic Security takes the lead on investigating potential instances of improper disclosure of classified and sensitive information. We do not comment on ongoing investigations."
We are limited to making recommendations and guarding the hen house.
#3
Molly Phee, Erin Barclay, Nerissa Cook: Three witches stirring the cauldron. Their employment should be terminated. However, since it is impossible to fire anyone at State, send them off as admin officers to Burkina Faso, Equatorial Guinea and Rwanda. That likely will stimulate them to find employment elsewhere.
[IsraelTimes] Number allowed in could be lower; resettlement agencies say of the 3 million refugees admitted since 1975, none tossed in the slammer You have the right to remain silent... for carrying out a lethal terror attack on US soil
How many died while carrying out a lethal terror attack, on US soil or elsewhere, and therefore could not be arrested? How many were caught in the planning stage? How many went elsewhere to commit jihad? How many were connected to jihadis or were even their parents? How many refugees or their chldren were merely criminals? So many questions the journalist did not ask here.
The US will slash the number of refugees it will accept for a second straight year, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday, insisting amid criticism from human rights ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty... groups that the country is still committed to providing sanctuary to people fleeing the world’s danger zones.
Up to 30,000 refugees will be allowed into the country next year, down from a cap of 45,000 this year. It will be the lowest ceiling on admissions since the program began in 1980. The announcement comes despite calls from global humanitarian groups that this year’s cap of 45,000 was too low.
Pompeo sought to head off potential criticism of the reduction by noting that the US would process more than 280,000 asylum claims in addition to more than 800,000 already inside the country who are awaiting a resolution of their claims.
"These expansive figures continue the United States’ long-standing record as the most generous nation in the world when it comes to protection-based immigration and assistance," he said.
The 30,000 cap is the maximum number of refugees the US will admit during the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. The actual number allowed in could be lower. So far this year, the US has only admitted 20,918 refugees for the fiscal year set to end in two weeks, according to State Department records.
President Barack Obama I inhaled. That was the point... raised the ceiling to 110,000 in 2017, but the pace slowed dramatically after 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... took office and issued an executive order addressing refugees. In 2016, the last full year of the B.O. regime, the US welcomed nearly 85,000 refugees.
[AlMasdar] Over 1,000 members of the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS) terrorist group are still fighting inside the al-Safa region of southern Syria, a military source told al-Masdar News.
According to the source, a captured Islamic State krazed killer admitted to the Syrian military that there were still 1,500 holy warriors in the al-Safa region; however, the army believed those numbers were hyperbolized.
The source said that the Syrian military estimates that there are between 1,000-1,200 Islamic State holy warriors that are still active in southern Syria.
These estimates are most likely true, given that the Islamic State has managed to fend off several Syrian Army attacks at the northeastern and southwestern axes of the al-Safa region.
ISIS is still in control of several points inside the al-Safa region, including one last water source in the Qabr Sheikh Hussein area.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/18/2018
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[AlMasdar] The Saudi Coalition continued their wide-scale air campaign over Yemen, today, targeting several areas controlled by the Houthi ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews ... forces (var. Ansarallah Movement).
Citing a local source, the Saba News Agency reported that at least eleven non-combatants were killed on Monday when the Saudi Coalition bombed residential building in the Bayda Governorate.
The Saba Agency added that one of the Arclight airstrikes struck a residential home in the Houran area of the al-Radman District.
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Dozens of displaced Iraqis have returned home from a refugee camp in neighboring Syria, the Iraqi Migration and Displacement Ministry declared on Monday.
The ministry said it received 376 Iraqis returning from al-Houl refugee camp in Syria’s Hassaka province.
Shafaq News website quoted ministry official Ali Abbas Jahakir saying that those were sheltered at Jaddaa camp, south of Iraq’s Nineveh province.
Thousands of Iraqis in Nineveh had fled to the Syrian camp after 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.... Death Eaters swept a third of Iraqi territories in 2014 to establish a self-proclaimed "caliphate".
Iraq’s war to drive Islamic State Death Eaters out had forced nearly five million to flee homes to areas both inside and outside Iraq. The United Nations ...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks... said recently that displacement numbers had dropped to two million people
[AnNahar] A new batch of displaced Syrians returned to their homeland Monday from the northern city of Tripoli ...a confusing city, one end of which is located in Lebanon and the other end of which is the capital of Libya. Its chief distinction is being mentioned in the Marine Hymn... Lebanese General Security agents escorted the buses that carried the refugees to Syria, the National News Agency said.
The agents also "oversaw the registration of the names and the organized the safe return," NNA added.
A number of returnees expressed their gratitude for Leb's government and people and thanked General Security for offering assistance.
"General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim's instructions are clear on offering all the necessary help to all returnees," a front man for General Security said.
"This should motivate the remaining displaced Syrians to voluntarily return to their homeland Syria and measures have been carefully taken to secure a safe return," the front man added.
Anbar (IraqiNews.com) Water levels at the Euphrates River in Iraq’s Anbar have declined by a half due to a reduced release from Syria, an Iraqi official was quoted saying on Monday as Iraqi provinces continue to feel a growing threat of water scarcity.
With brotherly Arab friends like these...
Manawer Abd al-Dulaimi, head of the water resources department at the city of Fallujah, ... the City of Mosques, which might have somthing to do with why it's not called Center of Prosperity or a really nice place to raise your kids... told Almaalomah website that water releases from the Syrian side have declined from 500 Sqm/hour to a half of that amount.
He said Euphrates River levels dropped by 50%, warning that the situation threatens availability of water for farmers and other citizens. Dualimi attributed the decline to high temperatures, shortage of water at reservoirs and human infringements on the river.
The official urged to rehabilitate dilapidated water facilities and to ration consumption as means to counter the problem.
Water shortages have ignited deadly protests at the recent weeks at Iraq’s southern provinces, adding pressure to the outgoing government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi who declared a set of measures to offset the water shortage.
Besides Euphrates, Iraq had also detected a drop in water levels at the Tigris River in Baghdad and djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... , which aroused fears of drought resulting from the Ottoman Turkish Ilisu dam, a project which Iraq warns could affect water levels in the country.
Correction: With brotherly Muslim friends like these...
#1
Wars don't have to be fought with bullets and bayonets.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/18/2018 9:08
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#2
The headwaters of those rivers are in Turkey. Turkey has been steadily increasing irrigated extent the last few years, hmmm? So blaming Syria seems ... premature.
[Free Beacon] International businesses across the United States and Europe are making a beeline to exit the Iranian marketplace ahead of the reimposition of harsh U.S. sanctions that Trump administration officials have been warning will target any company that defies America's call to cut ties with the Islamic Republic, according to multiple U.S. officials briefed on closed-door meetings held over the past months.
U.S. diplomats have been holding a series of meetings with top international business and banking leaders to spell out the Trump administration's new sanctions policy, which will come into full force in early November.
Since the United States withdrew from the nuclear deal, 31 European and Asian firms in the Global 500 have announced their intention to exit the Iranian market. Those companies include "France’s Total, Airbus, and PSA/Peugeot, Denmark’s Maersk, Germany’s Allianz and Siemens, Italy’s Eni, Japan’s Mazda and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, and BP from the United Kingdom," according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Multiple insiders familiar with these discussions told the Washington Free Beacon the Trump administration has been making clear that if anyone sides with Iran‐and a handful of European nations are angling to keep ties with Iran open‐they will be smacked with some of the harshest sanctions in recent memory.
Major banks and corporations had been plotting with some European allies to skirt the new restrictions prohibiting business with Iran, but are said to have ceased these efforts in recent weeks after tough warnings from top U.S. diplomats, sources said.
The meetings are being held as former Obama administration officials and their allies hold a series of counter meetings aimed at helping European nations and top companies skirt Trump's new sanctions. This rogue diplomacy‐including that of former Secretary of State John Kerry, who has held a series of meetings with top Iranian diplomats‐is being met with indignation by the Trump administration, which has accused the former administration and its allies of running a shadow diplomacy campaign aimed at undermining Trump.
Posted by: Besoeker ||
09/18/2018
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#1
Good. Trump means what he says.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/18/2018 0:41
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#2
The Iranian banking sector is being strangled:
Wednesday, June 07, 2017:5 Foreign Banks Licensed by Iran
The Central Bank of Iran has released the names of 40 registered banks and credit institutions active in the country, which include the names of five foreign banks mostly based in Tehran and Kish Free Trade Zone. The only five foreign lenders licensed to operate in Iran are the Hamburg-based Iranian-European Bank, Standard Chartered PLC, Iran-Venezuela Bi-National Bank, Islamic Cooperation Investment Bank...
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Two prominent Islamic State leaders were arrested, southwest of Kirkuk, the Iraqi Interior Ministry said on Monday.
A press release issued by the ministry said “Federal Police forces managed to arrest two Islamic State members in Hawija town, southwest of Kirkuk.”
One of them, according to the ministry, “was involved in terrorist operations, while the other was in charge of providing the militants with food commodities.”
Kirkuk (IraqiNews.com) Two civilians were kidnapped by Islamic State in Kirkuk province, a security source was quoted saying on Monday.
Speaking to AlSumari News, the source said “Islamic State members carried out, today, an ambush on Biji- Kirkuk road in Riyad town. They kidnapped two people to unknown destination.”
“Security troops cordoned off the region and conducted investigations,” the source, who preferred anonymity, said.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/18/2018
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[The Intercept] GOOGLE BUILT A prototype of a censored search engine for China that links users’ searches to their personal phone numbers, thus making it easier for the Chinese government to monitor people’s queries, The Intercept can reveal.
The search engine, codenamed Dragonfly, was designed for Android devices, and would remove content deemed sensitive by China’s ruling Communist Party regime, such as information about political dissidents, free speech, democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest.
Previously undisclosed details about the plan, obtained by The Intercept on Friday, show that Google compiled a censorship blacklist that included terms such as “human rights,” “student protest,” and “Nobel Prize” in Mandarin.
Leading human rights groups have criticized Dragonfly, saying that it could result in the company “directly contributing to, or [becoming] complicit in, human rights violations.” A central concern expressed by the groups is that, beyond the censorship, user data stored by Google on the Chinese mainland could be accessible to Chinese authorities, who routinely target political activists and journalists.
[AlMasdar] (10:15 A.M.) – The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS/Daesh) launched a large-scale counter-offensive in the Badiya Al-Sham region of western Deir Ezzor on Sunday.
The Islamic State began their assault, yesterday, by storming the Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) positions at the northeastern and southeastern axes of the Badiya Al-Sham region.
According to a military source in Damascus, the Syrian Arab Army was forced to withdraw from the areas they recently liberated in western Deir Ezzor after their first line of defense collapsed.
As a result of this Islamic State assault, more than 25 Syrian Arab Army soldiers were killed and dozens more were wounded.
The Islamic State reportedly recaptured all of the territory they lost to the Syrian Arab Army earlier in the week.
While the Russian and Syrian air forces entered the battle late last night, the Islamic State was still able to recover all of the ground they lost in the previous days.
[AlMasdar] (3:45 P.M.) – The US-backed Kurdish militia continues fight against the Islamic State in eastern Syria amid stiff resistance from the terror group.
Backed by US and French soldiers, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are attempting to break through ISIS defense lines in Hajin and Baghuz towns of Deir Ezzor eastern countryside.
However, the extremist organization has so far managed to repel all assaults; thus keeping its bastions under control in spite of the heavy airstrikes conducted by the US coalition.
Footage released by pro-SDF media shows US and French servicemen launching mortar and artillery strikes against ISIS militants.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/18/2018
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Nineveh (IraqiNews.com) Mass grave containing human remains 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.... leaders has been found, northwest of djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... , a security source from Nineveh police said on Monday.
Speaking to BasNews website, Col. Thamer Khedr said "security forces ran into a mass grave containing human remains of ten bodies of Islamic State members."
The members, according to Thamer, were killed by the bully boy group likely due to their reluctance during liberation battles, northwest of Mosul.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/18/2018
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[Bearing Arms] Being a customer in a business being robbed is pretty scary. When you’re armed, it takes on an added dimension, though. A thousand questions likely run through your mind, including the possibility of what happens if you don’t draw and fire your weapon. It doesn’t mean you don’t act, necessarily, but it may well play a role in your head before acting.
One question you don’t have the luxury of getting answered first, even if you have time to think it, is whether the gun is a firearm or a BB gun.
In a Georgia Waffle House over the weekend, an armed citizen acted to stop an armed robbery. The suspect’s weapon was, well, suspect.
Now, it becomes easy for people to sit here after the fact and lament the fact that someone was shot for having a BB gun, but that’s not what happened.
This person was shot because he was trying to threaten and bully his way into the cash register of a business that earned that money. The fact that it was a BB gun and not a real firearm is irrelevant. No one knew that when the citizen acted, and no one can blame him for assuming that it was a real gun.
After all, the criminal in question banked on people believe it to be a real firearm. That was his purpose in taking it into the restaurant in the first place. He wanted people to think he was armed.
[SunStar] A suspected hitman of the New People’s Army has surrendered and returned to the folds of the law over the weekend. A certain Bryan Fabre alias Alex, resident of Valencia City, turned himself in to the Eighth Infantry Battalion in Impasug-ong, Bukidnon. The military said Fabre was a member of Squad 1, SDG Platoon "Thunder", North Central Mindanao Regional Committee of the NPA.
The military reported that the former communist guerilla gave up because he got tired of running and hiding from the Philippine troops.
In a statement, the military said Fabre got fed up with the false promises of the organization "that left him with nothing but a life filled with fear and starvation".
"It is never too late to go back and start again. The government will be there to support and help you get back on your feet only if you give peace a chance," 8IB commander Lieutenant Colonel Ronald Illana said.
[IsraelTimes] An official in the Gazoo health ministry has appeared to walk back assertions made by Hamas, a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth", that a 12-year-old who died over the weekend in the coastal enclave had been shot by IDF troops.
"The boy died of a head injury," the anonymous source told Rooters, declining to give additional information and avoiding blaming the Israeli army for the child’s death.
The IDF has said its own evidence showed that the 12-year-old was hit by a rock thrown by protesters, and Gazoo rights groups reported he died after being struck "with a solid object," the AP reported earlier this week.
The Hamas-run Gazoo Health Ministry, by contrast, claimed Shady Abdel-al was killed by Israeli fire east of Jabalia in the northern part of the Strip.
[WhiteHouse.gov] At the request of a number of committees of Congress, and for reasons of transparency, the President has directed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Justice (including the FBI) to provide for the immediate declassification of the following materials: (1) pages 10-12 and 17-34 of the June 2017 application to the FISA court in the matter of Carter W. Page; (2) all FBI reports of interviews with Bruce G. Ohr prepared in connection with the Russia investigation; and (3) all FBI reports of interviews prepared in connection with all Carter Page FISA applications.
In addition, President Donald J. Trump has directed the Department of Justice (including the FBI) to publicly release all text messages relating to the Russia investigation, without redaction, of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
09/18/2018 2:15
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#3
...And there's already screams from the Usual Suspects(TM) that 1) this is obstruction of justice and therefore an impeachable offense, and 2) lawsuits need to be filed this morning stopping the declas.
And extra butter on mine, please.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
09/18/2018 5:04
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#4
"Er, sorry but the dog ate them."
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
09/18/2018 9:56
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#5
Better send over the U S Marshals or you will never get it.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/18/2018 16:57
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[Daily Caller] The Democratic nominee for governor in Florida who ran a primary campaign claiming he was the only "true progressive" in the race is proposing a 40 percent hike in the state's corporate taxes, and is selling the idea in-part by comparing his proposed tax rates to California, one of the highest states for corporate taxation in the nation.
"By adjusting our state corporate tax level to a modest 7.75%, which allows our richest corporations to receive a tax cut and keeps our corporate tax rate more than 1% lower than California, we'll be able to recoup at least $1 billion and put it where we need it most ‐ investing in our future," the Gillum campaign website says.
Florida's current top marginal corporate tax rate is 5.5 percent, half-a-point lower than neighboring Georgia, and a full point lower than Alabama, according to data compiled at the Tax Foundation.
Republicans are already highlighting the proposal as a stark difference between Gillum and the Republican nominee, Rep. Ron DeSantis.
A recent report from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune produced a long list of civic and business entities as well as former politicians saying the issue was certain to create on of the bigger clashes in the remainder of the campaign.
"National headquarters of companies in this state are focused on this like a laser beam," Tom Feeney, a former Republican Florida House speaker and president of Associated Industries of Florida, told the paper. Feeney's industry group represents some of the biggest companies in the state.
[AlMasdar] NATO is building up its naval presence in the Eastern Mediterranean as the United States, Britain and France prepare to carry out new strikes against Syria under the pretext of an unlikely Syrian government chemical weapons attack in Idlib province.
Warships from NATO’s 2nd Standing Maritime Group are patrolling Eastern Mediterranean waters, moving closer and closer to the Syrian coast, media reports said, citing Western websites monitoring naval activity in the region.
The NATO flotilla cruising off the Syrian coast reportedly consists of a Dutch frigate, the De Ruyter, a Canadian frigate, the Ville de Quebec, and a Greek cruiser, the Elli.This information was confirmed by the captain of the Dutch frigate in his microblog.
According to earlier reports, a Los Angeles-Class US submarine, the USS Newport News, armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles, has entered the Mediterranean Sea to join a US naval task force consisting of two nuclear submarines with cruise missiles on board and two Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers, the USS Carney and the USS Ross.
Recently, the Russian military said that the militants are preparing to use chemical weapons in Syria, and the US could use this as a reason for a new attack on Syrian state facilities.
[PhilStar] Seven people, one of them a three-year-old girl, were wounded in an explosion in Barangay Apopong, General Santos City late yesterday morning. Malacañang condemend the bombing and vowed to run after its perpetrators.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque Jr. said, “We condemn in the strongest possible terms (yesterday’s explosion that comes) at an unfortunate time when the nation is reeling from the effects of Ompong. Authorities are now conducting an investigation. We vow to bring the perpetrators of this brazen attack to justice."
Investigators said that two suspected Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters were behind the bombing. The militants asked a roadside barbecue vendor at the Makar-Apopong intersection if there was pork barbecue and left when told there was none. A witness confirmed seeing one of the suspects leave his bag behind, which exploded minutes after they left.
[PhilStar] Seven Abu Sayyaf gunmen were killed and 17 soldiers were injured in gunfights Saturday in Patikul town in Sulu.
Western Mindanao Command in Zamboanga City said the hostilities in Barangay Bakong, Patikul broke out when Abu Sayyaf rebels opened fire from two directons on soldiers approaching their lair. The soldiers returned fire and succeeded in driving their attackers away after killing seven of them in the two-hour exchange.
The soldiers were to check out Barangay Bakong due to the reported presence there of notorious Abu Sayyaf leader Radulan Sahiron and his lieutenants, Hatib Sawadjaan and Idang Susukan, all wanted for crimes, including multiple murder, frustrated murder and kidnappings.
Brig. Gen. Divino Rey Pabayo of the Joint Task Force Sulu said seven bodies of Abu Sayyaf militants were found scattered in the scenes of the running firefights. Six other rebels were reportedly injured in the clash. Pabayo also reported that 17 of his men were injured as they exchanged fire with Sahiron and his followers.
Sawadjaan reportedly sustained a bullet wound in the lower torso.
Posted by: ryuge ||
09/18/2018
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[AlMasdar] (1:45 P.M.) – Minutes ago, the Syrian Arab Army launched a powerful assault on the jihadist strongholds in the southern countryside of the Idlib Governorate.
According to a military source in nearby Hama, the Syrian Army launched a large number of missiles and artillery shells towards the jihadist trenches are the towns of Umm Khalkheel and Khuwayn.
In addition to the attacks on the aforementioned jihadist trenches, the Syrian Army also targeted the militant positions around the provincial border towns of Sukeek and Taman’ah.
The Syrian Arab Army is now raining missiles on Jaysh Al-Izza’s positions in the northern countryside of the Hama Governorate.
With the Russian and Turkish leaders meeting in Sochi to discuss the fate of Idlib, the Syrian Arab Army has been limited to missile and artillery strikes inside the province.
#1
it is not a 'heavy attack' if you are just doing missiles and artillery
I don't know how many loyal and high quality ground troops Assad still has but I doubt he can afford to lose a lot of them in an actual 'heavy attack' on Idlib. That may be the reason for the slow motion of this offensive.
Posted by: lord garth ||
09/18/2018 12:36
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The SAA has Syrians, but Lebanese and Palestinian troops as well. Likely a contributor to slow progress.
[AlMasdar] Kurdish units continue to hunt down Ottoman Turkish-backed rebel fighters across Afrin region in northern Syria in spite of the strict security measures taken to prevent such incidents.
The YPG press office released a video showing an FSA rebel fighters being assassinated, his rifle seized by a Kurdish unit. The incident took place on the road leading to the village of Berbene in Afrin’s Rajo district.
This comes as the Ottoman Turkish-backed groups in Afrin imposed a curfew across the region to safe their fighters from the Kurdish fire.
According to a Kurdish source, more than 10 FSA militates were killed across Afrin in the past 7 days.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
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#1
unless Turkey commits its own troops and tanks in substantial numbers, it's toadies will melt away as, IIUC, the Afrin population, by and large is pro Kurd even those who are Shia or Arab
Posted by: lord garth ||
09/18/2018 10:04
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[AnNahar] An anarchist group attacked the Iranian embassy in Athens early Monday, smashing windows and throwing red paint into the courtyard in protest at Tehran's treatment of its Kurdish population, police said.
"The attack was claimed by the Rubicon group," a police official told AFP, adding that no arrests had yet been made.
The attack was carried out by about 10 members of the group at about 0300 GMT who, armed with iron bars, took the guard by surprise and then smashed windows in the waiting room.
Nobody was hurt in the incident, police said.
In a statement on the internet, the Rubicon group claimed the attack as a gesture of solidarity with the "Kurds of Iran".
The Rubicon group has carried out a series of similar attacks in recent years, targeting embassies, companies and public buildings, causing damage but no injuries.
In August, members of the group burst into the Austrian embassy, protesting against Vienna's plans to extend the working day.
[Alamasdar] (8:30 A.M.) – A US-backed rebel group has reached an agreement with the Russian Reconciliation Center to leave the Tanf region for northern Syria.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the Quraytayn Martyrs Brigade has reached an agreement with the Russian Reconciliation Center to leave the Tanf region for the northern countryside of the Aleppo Governorate.
The SOHR report said that the rebel group will be evacuated from the Tanf region alongside their family members that are present in the Rukban Refugee Camp.
The rebel group will also be allowed to keep their military vehicles and weapons, which is different from most factions that are evacuated.
The Quraytayn Martyrs Brigade and their family members will be evacuated through the Syrian government’s territories until they reach the areas of the Aleppo Governorate that are controlled by the Turkish-backed rebels.
With the departure of the Quraytayn Martyrs Brigade from the Tanf region, only one rebel group remains in this large desert area controlled by the US forces.
[AlMasdar] (9:20 P.M.) – The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) launched a big counter-offensive against the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), today, after the latter regained all of the territory they lost to the government forces in east Homs.
Led by their Republican Guard forces, the Syrian Arab Army managed to retake all of the territory the Islamic State captured on Sunday evening.
According to a military report from Damascus, the Syrian Arab Army was able to retake all of the territory they lost after the Islamic State failed to secure their gains this morning.
However, despite the fact they recaptured these areas in the Badiya Al-Sham region of east Homs, the Syrian Army still suffered heavy losses over the last 24 hours.
The Syrian Army reported over 25 casualties after the Islamic State launched their big counterattack near the western border of the Deir Ezzor Governorate.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
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[Breitbart] Andrej Babiš has refused to bow to pressure demanding the Czech Republic resettle "war orphans" living in Greek camps, insisting that his responsibility as Prime Minister was to Czech orphans.
In an interview with Právo on Saturday, the Slovak-born businessman restated his position that the nation would not accept a single so-called refugee, nor 50 Syrian orphans as demanded by opposition politicians and MEPs, who spent last week campaigning to bring unaccompanied minors over from Greece to the Czech Republic.
"Since 2015 we have sent 2.5 billion koruna (87 million GBP) in development aid to countries helping refugees, sent physicians and experts to Syria and have treated 2,500 patients in Czech hospitals including a number of Syrian children since the migrant crisis," he said.
"Why should we accept them? We also have orphans in the Czech Republic who we must be preparing for life," he told the daily newspaper, stating "I went into politics mainly to look after Czech citizens. Why should we be caring for Syrian orphans?"
#1
Right-wing values. To the Left, these values look like fascism. Everything other than their own values looks like fascism. It makes other values easier to dismiss when you call them fascism.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
09/18/2018 1:19
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#2
It's up to Czech charities to fund non-citizens.
The state should only spend money on citizens, not virtue signalling opportunities for politicians.
[IsraelTimes] Leaders of Russia, The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...just another cheapjack Moslem dictatorship, brought to you by the Moslem Brüderbund.... announce deep demilitarized zone around last rebel-held region, where fears of a devastating assault by regime forces were running high
Moscow said Monday that there would be no assault on Syria’s Idlib as the leaders of Russia and Turkey agreed to create a demilitarized zone around the Syrian rebel-held province.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances... and 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. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey... ‐ who are on opposite sides in the deadly seven-year conflict in Syria ‐ met for over four hours in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi to decide the fate of Idlib, home to three million people.
"We will prevent a humanitarian tragedy which could happen as a result of military action," Erdogan said after the talks.
Putin said the two leaders agreed to create a 15-20 kilometer-wide demilitarized zone along the line of contact between rebels and regime troops by October 15.
This would entail a "withdrawal of all radical fighters" from Idlib including the al-Nusra ...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli al-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ... Front, he added.
Brilliant idea. It will be subsequently revealed that they’ll probably be sent on their own Trail of Tears to the city of Jisr al-Shughur, elsewhere in Idlib province.
Putin and Erdogan also agreed on the withdrawal of "heavy weaponry from this zone," including tanks, multiple launch rocket systems, and rocket launchers belonging to all gangs, the Russian leader added.
The demilitarized zone will be secured with the help of "mobile patrol groups of Ottoman Turkish contingents and contingents of Russian military police," Putin said.
By the end of the year, transportation routes between the key port of Latakia and Aleppo as well as Latakia and the major city of Hama must be restored, he added.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that the agreement between Putin and Erdogan meant that no military action would be taken against Idlib, Russian news agencies reported.
Russia-backed forces of the Syrian regime have massed around Idlib province in recent weeks, sparking fears of an imminent air and ground attack to retake the last major opposition bastion.
Erdogan and Putin met previously on September 7 in Tehran for a three-way summit with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. At that summit the Russian and Ottoman Turkish leaders openly disagreed over how to deal with the rebel stronghold, which borders Turkey.
MASS EXODUS FEARS
Turkey’s military has reportedly sent reinforcements to Idlib in recent weeks. Tanks and other hardware, with a convoy of 50 military vehicles, were sent over the border Sunday, according to the Hurriyet daily.
Turkey backs opposition fighters seeking the ouster of the Syrian leader. It has said a large-scale offensive against the rebels could trigger a mass exodus towards its border.
Russian and Syrian air strikes, artillery fire and barrel kabooms have killed more than 30 civilians across the province in the past month, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The bombardment has slowed over the past week, however, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday that the Syrian regime is not preparing a major offensive against Idlib, adding that Moscow will do everything to protect civilians.
The Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, when the Assad regime launched a crackdown on pro-democracy protests. The crackdown evolved into a complex conflict involving jihadists and world powers.
It has killed an estimated 360,000 people and forced millions to flee their homes.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
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[IsraelTimes] After severing of ties following deadly Gazoo border festivities in May, Jerusalem and Ankara now see vital shared interests in keeping Iran from dominating Syria.
Israel and The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... are holding backchannel talks in a bid to restore the all-but-severed diplomatic relations between the two nations.
After the violent protests on the Gazoo border in May in which over 60 Paleostinians, most of them members of Hamas, the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood, and other terror groups, were killed, Ottoman Turkish leader Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey... placed the blame for the deaths squarely on Israel, calling it a "terrorist state" that commits "genocide." Turkey recalled its ambassador and expelled Israel’s ambassador, Eitan Na’eh, and consul in Istanbul.
Israel responded at the time by expelling Turkey’s consul-general in Jerusalem and summoning the country’s deputy ambassador in Tel Aviv for a dressing down.
According to a report Monday in the daily Yedioth Ahronoth, if the latest talks bear fruit, both governments expect to return their respective ambassadors after the Jewish holiday season, or roughly in early October, some five months after the spat ‐ the latest in a series of diplomatic crisis spanning years.
Two private jets, one Israeli and one Ottoman Turkish, left their respective countries for Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday morning, flying via Amman, the report said. The flights are believed to be connected to the ongoing talks, but neither government has confirmed their purpose.
Turkey already returned its economic attache to Israel in recent weeks.
While Ankara under the leadership of Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has positioned itself as a supporter of Hamas and other staunchly anti-Israel forces since coming to power in 2003, the two nations now find themselves sharing vital interests on several fronts, especially Syria.
As the Syrian civil war grinds to an end with the final regime offensive underway in Idlib, Sunni Turkey is fearful of Shiite Iran’s domination of its southern neighbor, a concern shared by Israel.
Observers have noted in recent weeks that Turkey, usually the first in line to lambaste Israel, has remained silent over purported Israeli Arclight airstrikes against Hezbollah and Iranian weapons shipments and military installations in Syria.
Turkey also faces an economic crisis and a collapsing currency amid a diplomatic falling out and trade dispute with the United States over Ankara’s detention of an American pastor in the country on espionage charges.
Even at the height of the latest diplomatic crisis in May, Israeli officials took pains to clarify that relations were not beyond repair.
"Turkey is an important state in the region, and even though its leader made very grave remarks against Israel’s leadership and its actions, I think we repaid him in a similar vein," Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said at the time. "We said that a dictator like him who spills blood and behaves in such a cruel manner cannot lecture us."
Israeli officials responded to Erdogan’s accusations at the time in kind, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying Erdogan "well understands terrorism and slaughter" and should not preach to Israel about military ethics.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
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[AMGREATNESS] After days of gossip and innuendo to the effect that the likely next Supreme Court Justice might just be some sort of pervert, Anonymous finally came forward and identified herself as a victim of a then 17-year-old inebriated Brett Kavanaugh who (she says) sexually manhandled her in 1982 when she was 15. More specifically, the woman now alleges that Kavanaugh and another student at a high-school party entered a room inebriated, pinned her to a bed, and then groped her while she was clothed. Young Kavanaugh then allegedly attempted to take her clothes off her while he and his classmate, Mark Judge, both laughed “maniacally.” She adds that she had sought “medical treatment” for her unspecified injuries.
Anonymous identified herself in the Washington Post on Sunday as Christine Blasey Ford, a registered Democrat, Bernie Sanders supporter, and psychology professor at Palo Alto University, who otherwise had no recollection exactly where or when the supposed assault occurred some 36 years ago. Nor did she offer any clear reason why she had never then, or in the more than three decades since, contacted authorities to report the purported assault, other than claiming in 2012 that the incident then 30 years earlier still troubled her and contributed to her own sense of unease.
Or as Ford explained her sudden self-unmasking over the weekend: “Now I feel like my civic responsibility is outweighing my anguish and terror about retaliation.” A cynic might suggest that anonymity was useful in the 11th-hour smearing of Kavanaugh, but had proved not quite enough to derail his nomination, and so the fallback and default position of identification followed.
"There's another bathroom in here," a voice I had just passed said quietly. I turned to find Brett Kavanaugh Mason Crawford and two of his friends leaning against what I imagined was a bedroom door. He wore a smile that I didn't trust. "It's the master," he whispered.
I quickly measured my mistrust of him against the biological need that was growing. "No bull?" I asked, instantly regretting putting words to my doubts.
"Honest," Brett Mason said, raising both his hands, one holding a beer bottle. He showed me what I thought was an innocent expression. One of his friends, Judge Frank I thought his name was, nodded in agreement. Brett Mason opened the door and stood to the side.
"Thanks," I said and entered the room. I was surprised when Brett Mason then closed the door, staying outside and leaving me in peace. The room was the master. A huge four poster bed with a small sitting area in a window alcove... I opened the first of two doors and found a huge walk in closet. The next door held a magnificent bathroom. Dual sinks and a walk-in shower that could hold ten. The mirror reflected a head of hair that looked like it had been in a convertible for a few hours...
I left the bathroom, and my gratitude to Brett Mason ended as quickly as it began. He stood inside the bedroom between me and the door to the hall. The smirk on his face was anything but friendly.
"Thanks for letting me know about the bathroom," I said in a friendly tone. Brett Mason didn't move as I approached the door. I tried to shove the fear that was growing to the side. He hadn't done anything wrong, but his stance indicated he had ideas.
"You going with the dweeb?" Brett Mason asked. He was like a wall between the door and me. I was forced to slow or attempt to push him out of the way. At six-five and a good two-hundred-plus pounds, it would have been a futile attempt.
"I don't know any dweebs," I responded. I put my hands on my hips and gave him the look my mother gave me when she was upset. If it weren't for my hips holding my hands steady, I was sure they would be shaking.
"McGuire," Brett Mason clarified. His massive arms folded themselves across his chest.
"Caleb and I are just friends," I said, letting some anger fill my tone. It was better than letting the fear escape.
"You turned me down and let that nerd take you to the prom?"Brett Mason asked.
"You never asked," I replied. I thankfully held back the rest of the statement that formed in my mind...
"You obviously don't know what a real man is like,"Brett Mason said. It sounded more like a threat than a statement. He leaned forward and fear made me take a step back. I gritted my teeth and decided to stand firm and not back up anymore...
"No!" I shouted. This time, real anger filled the word... I tried to move around Mason now that there was more space between him and the door. I wasn't quick enough.
Brett's Mason's hand shot out and grabbed my wrist like a vice. An involuntary grunt left my lips as he yanked me against his chest and wrapped his other arm around me. I only got out the first part of a scream when his massive hand covered my mouth. I grabbed his wrist with my free hand, and he chuckled as I tried to pull his hand from my face. Black fear filled my mind as he dragged me deeper into the room. I could do nothing against his strength...
"One night with me and your life will change."
I tried to hit his sides and scratch at his face. It was like a brick wall and only made him laugh. My wrist felt like it was going to break and tears filled my eyes.
"Silence," he ordered as his hand moved from my mouth to my hair. With a fistful of hair, he yanked my head back straining my neck. Pure terror filled me when I saw the intent in his eyes.
I am writing with information relevant in evaluating the current nominee to the Supreme Court. As a constituent, I expect that you will maintain this as confidential until we have further opportunity to speak. Brett Kavanaugh physically and sexually assaulted me during high school in the early 1980’s. He conducted these acts with the assistance of REDACTED.
Both were one to two years older than me and students at a local private school.
The assault occurred in a suburban Maryland area home at a gathering that included me and four others. Kavanaugh physically pushed me into a bedroom as I was headed for a bathroom up a short stair well from the living room. They locked the door and played loud music precluding any successful attempt to yell for help. Kavanaugh was on top of me while laughing with REDACTED, who periodically jumped onto Kavanaugh. They both laughed as Kavanaugh tried to disrobe me in their highly inebriated state. With Kavanaugh’s hand over my mouth I feared he may inadvertently kill me.
From across the room a very drunken REDACTED said mixed words to Kavanaugh ranging from “go for it” to “stop.” At one point when REDACTED jumped onto the bed the weight on me was substantial. The pile toppled, and the two scrapped with each other. After a few attempts to get away, I was able to take this opportune moment to get up and run across to a hallway bathroom. I locked the bathroom door behind me. Both loudly stumbled down the stair well at which point other persons at the house were talking with them. I exited the bathroom, ran outside of the house and went home.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2018
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#1
Her story has changed again. First it was her and two young men. Then it was her and four young men. Now it's her, another un-named girl, and four young men. Sh doesn't remember where or when. I smell BS.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
09/18/2018 7:42
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#4
The problem here, IMO, that if slander like succeeds - the slanderer is allowed to fade into woodwork (after receiving her reward from hers masters)
How about an NGO who sue these women for defamation afterwards?
#5
Keith Ellison's accuser Karen Monahan claims to have video evidence of him physically abusing her and saying some extremely unkind things about women. Double standard? I really don't see any standard at all.
#7
AND the accuser seems to be a grudge Democrat Social Warrior Activist with an Agenda. You won't find that as a fact the MSM will prioritize.
It happened 36 years ago, CAN'T be proven, we are just supposed to take her word for it, and she can't remember the actual day or the year it occurred.
Do you smell Cheese ?
I won't bring up Democratic Party playbook of repeated smears ( i rather liked Herman Caine )when all else fails and double standard Kennedy Cadillac floating bottom up in the Chappaquidick with a dead drowned girl left until morning. But then that might impugn Democratic Party double standards and Values. But it DOES sort of illustrate the sort of people we are dealing with in Feinstein.
Kavanaugh has a PROVEN record as a decent man and a very fine talent at Law. He also has a proven and validated record of over 70 women professional and private who have gone on their record to stand up for his record as a gentleman. And Feinstein is ( in my opinion common and ordinary as that is ) a raving duplicitous Moonbat.
#8
we are just supposed to take her word for it, and she can't remember the actual day or the year it occurred
Because it didn't leave a lasting expression?
p.s. Suppose I believe her - so what, he took no for an answer (otherwise she wouldn't have escaped). The bastards sitting in Supreme now kill thousands (and I don't mean abortions: I don't mind these) and destroy the lives of millions.
It was a very busy day for all — except the firefighters, who for a change had nothing to do.
[IsraelTimes] Suspects approached border east of Khan Younis in southern Strip, are reportedly killed in Arclight airstrike; incident comes amid uptick in Gazoo violence
An Israeli aircraft fired at two Paleostinians whom the military said planted a "suspicious object" along the security fence in the southern Gazoo Strip on Monday night.
"An IDF aircraft attacked snuffies who approached the fence in the southern Gazoo Strip in a suspicious manner and planted a suspicious object along it," the army said in a statement.
Paleostinian media reported that the suspects were killed in the airstrike, east of the city of Khan Younis. This could not be immediately confirmed.
The Hamas, a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",-run Gazoo health ministry said medical teams were searching the border region east of Khan Younis but had yet to find any casualties.
The Monday airstrike came amid a general uptick in violence along the security fence, with Paleostinians holding riots on the border both in the day and night.
A group of Gazooks were also said to have broken through the security fence and entered Israeli territory on Monday night, setting fire to an empty IDF sniper nest near the border.
The Israeli military refused to comment on the report.
Earlier on Monday evening, a balloon with a hand grenade attached to it was discovered in a peanut field near the Gazoo border, between the southern kibbutzim of Re’im and Urim.
Police volunteers identified the helium-filled balloon as it came down in the field. Police sappers were called the scene to disarm the grenade, and Route 234 between the two communities was temporarily closed to traffic. It was not immediately clear whether the weapon was a fragmentation, stun or tear gas grenade, but the pin appeared to have been pulled, making it unlikely that the grenade was still active.
An IDF front man said the army was investigating whether the balloon was flown over the Gazoo border.
Locals said harvest was planned for tomorrow, and a tractor could have set the grenade off had it not been identified by the volunteers.
Throughout the day, Paleostinians burned tires and rioted in the northern Gazoo Strip, as a 15-boat flotilla set sail from the area in an effort to break the Israeli maritime blockade.
In response, IDF troops reportedly launched tear gas canisters at the rioters and fired live rounds to disperse the protest in Beit Lahiya.
Reports in Paleostinian media said dozens of people were maimed by Israeli fire and tear gas.
[AlMasdar] The faceless myrmidons in the Syrian Idlib province are likely to be moved to the Jisr al-Shughur
...in 2015 the city was captured by an alliance of Salafist insurgents, including al-Qaeda's al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, and the Turkistan Islamic Party. The city has become a stronghold of the TIP, and reportedly 3,500 Uyghurs have since settled there. By July 2017, the city was under joint control of Al Nusra/Tahrir al-Sham and the Turkistan Islamic Party...
in order to reduce casualties among the civilians, representative of Astana opposition platform Mahmoud Afandi told Sputnik Monday.
"Most likely, all faceless myrmidons will be moved to one area ‐ Jisr al-Shughur. This place already now has almost no civilians," Afandi said.
The opposition member noted that the main issue would be how to remove faceless myrmidons from the city of Idlib.
"The main question now is how to remove Nusra* from the city of Idlib... For civilians, corridors will be opened," he added.
While the Syrian government has eliminated faceless myrmidons in vast territories of the country, Idlib is still occupied by the bully boys. Since late August, tensions have escalated in the region, with Russia claiming that faceless myrmidons were preparing a false-flag chemical attack there, set to provoke a western retaliatory strike.
The West, meanwhile, tends to believe that it is Damascus that plans to carry out an attack against civilians.
According to the United Nations ...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks... , Idlib is the base for approximately 10,000 members of the Nusra Front and Al Qaeda* terrorist groups. The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire.... Influences Opposition Groups in Idlib to Separate From Terrorists
TURKEY INFLUENCES OPPOSITION GROUPS IN IDLIB TO SEPARATE FROM TERRORISTS
The opposition representative also noted that Ankara was trying to make moderate opposition fight against faceless myrmidons in the region.
"Erdogan has the intention of reconciliation. Already now Turkey is actively influencing gangs on the ground in Idlib to make them reconcile and agree to fight against Nusra faceless myrmidons with the government, having Russia as the guarantor of their survival," Afandi said.
He expressed hope that the situation in the province would be the same as it was in Daraa.
"Russian military police would monitor Idlib and guarantee that the government does not attack the military groups who decided to surrender, while these military groups take the side of the fight against terrorism. The situation will be similar to that of Daraa," Afandi added.
The Idlib de-escalation zone in Syria is under the responsibility of Turkey as a guarantor state, and Russia expects Ankara to facilitate the difficult process of separating moderate opposition groups from faceless myrmidons in the area, Russian special presidential envoy for Syria Alexander Lavrentyev announced last week in Geneva after the guarantors’ meeting.
"Armed opposition groups in Idlib have only one condition ‐ to prevent any Iranian presence in Idlib. This condition will be voiced by Erdogan to Putin," Afandi said in the wake of the meeting between Russian and Ottoman Turkish presidents in Sochi.
Last week, Lavrentyev said that terrorists’ surrender would be the best option for solving the situation in the Idlib province, in order to prevent casualties among civilians.
[AlAhram] Belgian police shot and seriously maimed a man who they said attacked them with a knife after they found him sleeping rough near a centre for asylum seekers in Brussels on Monday.
Prosecutors dismissed any terrorist motive on the part of the man, who a local refugee organization said was an Egyptian asylum-seeker, and opened investigations into both the knife attack and the coppers' use of a firearm.
Shortly after 9 a.m. in an area dominated by government offices, two coppers used a baton and pepper spray on the man when he pulled the knife after they woke him and asked him to move on. When he slashed one in the face, the other officer shot the man in the chest and leg. A third shot missed.
The prosecutors office said the officer was only slightly hurt. The man was taken to hospital in a critical condition.
Mehdi Kassou, a front man for the Citizens Platform for Refugee Support in Belgium, said the man was aged about 40 and had been sleeping rough in the area for several months.
The incident took place in Parc Maximilien, an area known as a gathering point for mainly North African immigrants colonists hoping to head on to Britannia, police spokeswoman Ilse Van Der Keere said.
Good to know that if it were the real thing, civilians would evacuate themselves instead of waiting around to be attacked, I suppose. Also, why did the tablet do that?
[EXPRESS.CO.UK] The blast was caused by a computer tablet exploding in the cramped carriage.
The device injured its owner, believed to be a woman who was carrying it in her bag, and at least five more people sitting nearby.
And more had to be assisted by paramedics for smoke inhalation, according to El Mundo.
The explosion happened on a Line 9 train travelling towards Paco de Lucia at Principe de Vergara tube station in the Spanish capital.
Police and paramedics rushed to the scene to assist the casualties.
A spokeswoman for Emergencies Madrid said members of the staff were helping 17 passengers deal with the shock.
According to El Mundo, Spain's second-largest newspaper, the explosion sparked panic across the train, with commuters afraid of being the target of a terrorist act.
Nine people were assisted by doctors after suffering from panic attacks, the newspaper added.
Gonzalo Casatejada, 33, told Spanish daily El Pais: "People started running, they said there was a backpack with smoke.
"We opened the door manually, we had been standing for several minutes, but people got scared and everybody started to run.
"We were afraid that it would be an attack."
People inside the carriages activated the emergency brake to leave the train, walking in the darkness along the track for approximately 100 metres, where they found the platform.
Following the blast, the underground service was immediately halted between Sainz de Baranda and Avenida de America to investigate into what caused the explosion - but it was later restored.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2018
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[AlMasdar] (9:30 A.M.) – A high ranking member of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was reportedly killed by the Turkish Armed Forces in northern Iraq this past weekend.
According to the Turkish Army media account, their air force killed Murat Akdogan (AKA Ali Gever) in an airstrike over the Avasin-Basyan region of Iraq.
Akdogan was in the orange category of Turkey’s most wanted terrorist list before his death on Friday.
The PKK currently has a large presence in the northern region of Iraq; this has prompted the Turkish Armed Forces to carry out several military operations near their border.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
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#1
age, body size, disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
None of this shit has anything to do with building software. The quality of your code or the completeness of your design does not depend on how fat you are or who/what you like to boink. This is one of those engineering domains where there are objective standards of good and bad that have nothing to do with anyone's feelings.
The Python (a computer language) community just had a dust-up over whether the engineering terms "master" and "slave" were offensive.
Prediction: some high-profile member of the Linux community will be driven out by a mob in the next few months.
“Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners.”
-- comedian George Carlin
#2
An organization can have one central mission. As soon as it has two, both will suffer.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
09/18/2018 6:56
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#3
SteveS -- Linus *is* a high-ranking member of the community. Now, from what I've heard, he does need to work on his communication skills, or get some distance between himself and the OS he's been working on for over 25 years. The biggest question is whether he will return to the project or find something new to work on.
But, yeah, generally this crap is going overboard. The SJWs are demanding to be treated as equals, then complaining when they don't perform as equals and are called out on it. The bizarre attacks on terminology are just muscle-flexing -- how much power do they have? Is it enough to control the language yet?
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
09/18/2018 7:35
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#4
I don't think the people driving the narrative will allow for taking indoctrination training before the fact as insurance against being called out later.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
09/18/2018 7:54
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#5
notice that under the code you can still harass conservatives, Republicans and Libertarians
Posted by: lord garth ||
09/18/2018 11:43
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#6
Prediction: some high-profile member of the Linux community will be driven out by a mob in the next few months.
Fortunately there's no institution that is in control of the Linux kernel.
Those who will be driven out (and that's certainly going to happen) can freely modify and distribute the kernel under the GPL.
I predict a fork as the LKML goes dysfunctional. The Linux kernel will survive.
#7
For fellow not so geeky (or not so up-to-date) readers, the tragicomic context omitted by ZDnet:
This new code is based on the Contributor Covenant. This open-source code of conduct is already being used by such projects as Eclipse, Kubernetes, and Rails. It was created by Coraline Ada Ehmke, a software developer and open-source advocate.
The Donetsk council of ministers have chosen September 22nd to begin registration for candidates of elective office, according to data supplied by the pro Russian website Russkaya Vesna.
Elections for the post of president and members of the legislative body will take place November 11th.
The last time elections were held in Donetsk was four years ago, in the height of fighting between Russian backed separatists and the Ukrainian government.
The elections take in the way of the death of Donetsk president Aleksandr Zakharchenko last August 31st. He was killed in a bombig attack at a cafe in Donetsk city.
[AlMasdar] Hezbollah has emerged stronger after participating in the Syrian War for the last five years, the Soufan Group said in a new report on Monday.
"While the so-called ’Party of God’ has suffered significant casualties in Syria, losing nearly 2,000 fighters throughout the course of the war, it has gained valuable combat experience, and improved its interoperability and exposure to new weapons systems," the report said.
"During its deployment to Syria, Hezbollah gained invaluable experience fighting across a range of terrains, from urban redoubts to austere rural environments. Hezbollah also gained valuable experience fighting against adversaries other than Israel, its most familiar foe. In Syria, Hezbollah clashed with other non-state actors, including highly capable groups like the so-called Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....."
"Hezbollah will benefit from training with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF) and Russian special operations troops‐experience sure to enhance its interoperability, improve command and control, and provide training on a range of new weapons systems, including emerging technologies like unmanned aerial systems," the report highlighted.
The report also discussed Hezbollah’s expanded role in the region, including their ties with groups like the Houthi ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews ... forces and their opposition to the Kingdom of 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... .
[IsraelTimes] To mark 30 years since its first orbital launch, Defense Ministry publishes images from its newest spy satellite, showing Syrian tanks, an airfield... and Bashir al-Assad’s home
The warning came Monday morning. Monday night the information was used for targetting. A useful lesson for all involved.
Israel on Monday released photographs taken by its newest spy satellite of sites located deep inside Syria, including Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad’s palace, in an apparent threat to the regime.
The images, taken by the Ofek 11 spy satellite, were released by the Defense Ministry to mark 30 years since Israel’s first orbital launch on September 19, 1988.
The three photographs released by the ministry showed the Syrian Presidential Palace, also known as the Palace of the People; tanks on a Syrian military base; and the Damascus international airport, which was reportedly targeted by an Israeli missile strike on Saturday night.
The publication of the images could be seen as both a show of strength and a tacit threat to Syria, where Israel has routinely conducted air raids against Iranian targets ‐ over 200 of them since 2017, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
The Saturday night strike reportedly targeted an Iranian plane at the Damascus international airport that was delivering weapons to pro-regime forces and Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps units fighting in Syria’s civil war, as well as several weapons storage facilities at the airport itself.
THE OFEK 11
The Ofek 11 spy satellite was launched on September 13, 2016, using a Shavit rocket, the same basic model that Israel used to launch the first Ofek satellite 30 years before.
Shortly after takeoff, the team operating the satellite discovered it was not functioning properly. Teams of engineers on the ground worked to stabilize the Ofek 11 and get its systems running.
Israel’s Ofek-11 spy satellite takes off from Palmachim air base in central Israel on September 13, 2016. (Ministry of Defense Space Administration)
Nine days later, the satellite beamed back its first images, dispelling fears that it was a total operational loss.
"The Ofek 11 satellite will provide operational outputs," the Defense Ministry said at the time.
The Ofek 11 was an upgrade from the Ofek 10 satellite launched by Israel in April 2014.
The Ofek 11 joined approximately 10 other satellites, including the Ofek 10, Ofek 9, Ofek 7 and Ofek 5, that feed intelligence to Israel’s security forces.
"Israel’s independent capabilities in the field of satellites represents a significant advantage in its efforts to stand up to various security threats. The quality of the images and photographs that are produced by our different satellites is incredible and provide us with valuable intelligence, and prove that the sky is not the limit," Amnon Harari, the head of the Defense Ministry’s space program, said on Monday.
[AlMasdar] Houthi ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews ... rebels said they have used an armed drone to target Saudi-backed forces in west coastal province of Yemen.
According to a statement released by the Houthis, an operation room for the Saudi-backed troops were hit by an armed drone type Qasef-1, killing and injuring scores.
Meanwhile, ...back at the barn, Bossy was furiously chewing her cud and thinking... a ballistic missile fired by Houthi rebels hit another gathering for the pro-coalition forces in western Yemen.
[AnNahar] Ottoman Turkish President Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey... has vowed that Ankara will increase rather than reduce its troops numbers in Cyprus, a move that could further set back attempts to reunify the divided Mediterranean island.
In comments published in Ottoman Turkish media Monday, Erdogan added that The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...just another cheapjack Moslem dictatorship, brought to you by the Moslem Brüderbund.... had no need for a naval base on Cyprus as mooted in some reports but could establish such a facility if it was necessary from a "psychological" point of view.
"No, we are not going to reduce the numbers of our troops. We will increase them, we are not going to decrease them," he told Ottoman Turkishnews hounds traveling back with him from a trip to Azerbaijan.
He expressed impatience over the Cyprus issue, saying "this business would have been solved" if the Greek Cypriots had backed unification in an April 2004 referendum on a plan put forward by the late former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan ...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo... While Ottoman Turkish Cypriots were overwhelmingly in favour of the plan, Greek Cypriots voted against.
"Henceforth we will implement the formula that we have declared for ourselves," said Erdogan, without elaborating.
Cyprus has been divided since the 1974 Ottoman Turkish invasion which occupied the northern third of the island in response to a Greek military junta-sponsored coup.
Turkey is believed to maintain around 35,000 troops in northern Cyprus, although the military does not give official figures.
The withdrawal -- or drastic reduction -- of Turkey's military presence is seen as key to any reunification plan being acceptable to the Greek Cypriot side.
Some conservative Ottoman Turkish media have also reported in recent weeks that Turkey was planning to open a naval base on Cyprus, a move that would likely deal a terminal blow to any reunification hopes.
But Erdogan said "we have no need to build a base there," noting that unlike Greece, Turkey was just "minutes away" from the coast of Cyprus.
But he appeared to leave the door open to such a move as a way of making a political statement.
"This issue just has a psychological dimension. In this respect, if we felt the need, we could establish a base. Our presence there is important," Erdogan said.
There were high hopes at the beginning of 2017 that U.N.-backed talks could clinch a breakthrough in the long-running stalemate on reuniting the island.
But the deadlock has not been broken and analysts say rapid progress is unlikely for the moment as Erdogan reaches out to the nationalist electorate in Turkey.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
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#1
Ah, the old Roman design, move unreliable legions to the frontiers away from Rome.
[IsraelTimes] 14 servicemen aboard plane which went missing over Mediterranean; Syria claims 2 killed after Israel fires missiles from Lebanese airspace toward chemical weapons-linked facility
A Russian military plane with 14 servicemen aboard was accidentally shot down by Syrian air defenses as they tried to repel an alleged Israeli strike on Monday, a US official told CNN.
The official added that the plane was downed by a Russian-made missile system which was sold to Syria.
Whoops! Still, it looks like the thing works as promised.
Russian state news TASS said the IL-20 disappeared over the Mediterranean on Monday evening.
According to TASS, the ministry of defense said "the mark of IL-20 went off the radars disappeared during the attack of four Israeli F-16 aircraft on Syrian targets in the province of Latakia."
Israel does not regularly comment on alleged strikes in Syria.
A Syrian facility linked to the country’s chemical weapons program was bombed on Monday night, triggering Syrian air defenses, state media reported.
The state-run al-Ikhbariya TV reported loud kabooms in the coastal Latakia province, saying they were likely from Israeli strikes targeting a state company for technical industries.
The Syrian army said that Israel fired missiles from Lebanese airspace, adding that two people were killed in the attack and the facility was severely damaged, Hadashot reported early Tuesday.
A spokesperson for the US Department of Defense denied that the American military was behind the attack, telling the Voice of America news outlet, "I can unequivocally say this is not us."
Syrian military sources told SANA that the attack came from the direction of the sea and targeted an Organization for Technological Industries center in Latakia.
The sources also claimed the country’s air defenses shot down a number of incoming missiles. The Syrian army has regularly been accused of exaggerating its interception capabilities.
The attack caused a large kaboom and knocked out power to the surrounding area, according to local media.
The Organization for Technological Industries is a subsidiary of the Syrian Ministry of Defense and has been tied to the developments of both missiles and chemical weapons.
The Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported the kabooms, saying the target appeared to be an ammunition depot, part of the compound of the organization. The war monitoring group said it was not clear if the depot was for Iranian or Syrian forces.
The strikes followed a similar attack on Damascus International Airport late Saturday, which Syrian state media also blamed on Israel. A military official quoted then on state media said Syrian air defenses intercepted some missiles coming from the sea.
Air traffic controllers at the Khmeimim Air Base "lost contact" with the aircraft on Monday evening, during the attack of Israeli F-16 fighters on Latakia, said the Russian Defense Ministry. The plane was 35 kilometers off the coast of Syria when it vanished.
A search and rescue mission is underway.
Russian radars also registered the launch of missiles from a French frigate in the Mediterranean on the evening of September 17.
The Ilyushin 20 (IL-20) surveillance turboprop plane is an Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) platform, equipped with a wide range of antennas, infrared and optical sensors. The aircraft's SLAR (Side-Looking Airborne Radar) and the plane's satellite link allows the Russian military to monitor Syrian skies in real time.
An hour-long attack on Latakia began around 10 pm local time, and targeted a power station as well as two facilities belonging to the Syrian military. Syrian officials said the attack was "foreign" and came "from the sea," but could not initially confirm rumors that Israel was behind it. Seven people were maimed in the attack, according to Syrian officials.
While the Russian military said it recorded four F-16 Israeli jets over Syria at the time of the attack on Latakia, the IDF has refused to comment on the report.
Mysterious Mideast ascriptions:
If Russia is having conniptions,
Refer to past slips...
And aren't airplanes like ships?
Say, those vicious old Hunt-class Egpytians?
#11
That is what happens in a clustered and confused airspace.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Israeli F-16s came up close to where the IL-20 was, fired missiles and hauled ass out of there with the thought they could use the Russians as cover.
#12
"The Israeli pilots were using the Russian aircraft as a shield and pushed it into the line of fire of the Syrian defense," Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said in a statement.
Russia said Israel did not warn it of its operation over Latakia province until one minute before the strikes, which did not give the Russian plane enough time to escape. The official added that the plane was downed by a Russian-made missile system which was sold to Syria.
[Ynet] Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says at least 28 pro-regime Syrian fighters were killed in Israeli attacks on war-torn country since April.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Monday 113 Iranian and militias members identified with the Islamic Theocratic Republic were killed during the two past months in Israeli Arclight airstrikes in Syria.
According to the Observatory, Iranian officers, and at least 28 pro-regime Syrian fighters were killed in the kabooms of the arms depots and warehouses that were attacked since April and which Syria attributed to Israel.
Among the Iranian targets in Syria that were struck are the al-Nayrab military airbase near Aleppo, Mezzeh military airport on the western edge Damascus, several locations in the Quneitra province that were repeatedly attacked, Dabaa military airfield in the Syrian province of Homs near the Syrian-Lebanese border, T-4 military airfield, locations in south west Syria, Aleppo International Airport, and the military airport in Hama.
In addition, according to the Syrian opposition head, Israel has attacked in recent months weapons depots near the Damascus International Airport and the coastal city of Baniyas, the town of Masyaf, Hama and other suburbs of the Syrian capital.
Following the attack on the Damascus International Airport Saturday which Syria also attributed to Israel, Syrian state news agency SANA reported the country's defense systems were activated and several Israeli missiles were intercepted.
"Our air defense systems thwarted an Israeli missile aggression on Damascus International Airport," the news agency SANA cited a military source as saying.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said Israel does not comment on foreign reports.
According to the Arab media outlets, the attack was directed against advanced weapons depots containing new arms delivery. They added severe damage was caused, but no casualties were reported.
Two weeks earlier, Syria said a series of kabooms took place in at the Mezzeh military airport in Damascus. However, a hangover is the wrath of grapes... the Al Jazeera news network reported the attack targeted the scientific research center in the Jamraya area on the outskirts of Damascus.
Furthermore, it is estimated that since the beginning of Syria's civil war, 8,004 non-local fighters have been killed, most of them Shi'ite operating under the auspices of the Revolutionary Guards, and 1665 Hezbollah activists.
The Observatory added that 32,000 imported muscle took part in the fighting in the war-torn country over the past seven years.
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.
[WSJ] The Salem witch trials turned on what was called "spectral evidence." That was testimony from witnesses‐either malicious or hysterical‐who claimed the accused had assumed the form of a black cat or some other devilish creature and had come visiting in the night in order to torment the witness with bites and scratches, or to rearrange the bedroom furniture, or to send the baby into paroxysms.
[Breitbart] Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page admitted under oath that a text exchange with FBI agent Peter Strzok meant that "it still existed in the scope of possibility that there would be literally nothing" to the Russia collusion story on the eve of Robert Mueller’s appointment to investigate that issue as special counsel, according to a Sunday Fox News report.
Up to 30,000 refugees will be allowed into the country next year, down from a cap of 45,000 this year. It will be the lowest ceiling on admissions since the program began in 1980. The announcement comes despite calls from global humanitarian groups that this year’s cap of 45,000 was too low.
... 
[Free Beacon] International businesses across the United States and Europe are making a beeline to exit the Iranian marketplace ahead of the reimposition of harsh U.S. sanctions that Trump administration officials have been warning will target any company that defies America's call to cut ties with the Islamic Republic, according to multiple U.S. officials briefed on closed-door meetings held over the past months.
Surely there must be some digital method of sorting the living from the dead. 
Nineveh (IraqiNews.com) Mass grave containing human remains of 
[Bearing Arms] Being a customer in a business being robbed is pretty scary. When you’re armed, it takes on an added dimension, though. A thousand questions likely run through your mind, including the possibility of what happens if you don’t draw and fire your weapon. It doesn’t mean you don’t act, necessarily, but it may well play a role in your head before acting.
[SunStar] A suspected hitman of the New People’s Army has surrendered and returned to the folds of the law over the weekend. A certain Bryan Fabre alias Alex, resident of Valencia City, turned himself in to the Eighth Infantry Battalion in Impasug-ong, Bukidnon. The military said Fabre was a member of Squad 1, SDG Platoon "Thunder", North Central Mindanao Regional Committee of the NPA.
[IsraelTimes] An official in the 
[Daily Caller] The Democratic nominee for governor in Florida who ran a primary campaign claiming he was the only "true progressive" in the race is proposing a 40 percent hike in the state's corporate taxes, and is selling the idea in-part by comparing his proposed tax rates to California, one of the highest states for corporate taxation in the nation.
[PhilStar] Seven people, one of them a three-year-old girl, were wounded in an explosion in Barangay Apopong, General Santos City late yesterday morning. Malacañang condemend the bombing and vowed to run after its perpetrators. 
[PhilStar] Seven Abu Sayyaf gunmen were killed and 17 soldiers were injured in gunfights Saturday in Patikul town in Sulu.
[AnNahar] An anarchist group attacked the Iranian embassy in Athens early Monday, smashing windows and throwing red paint into the courtyard in protest at Tehran's treatment of its Kurdish population, police said.
...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances...
... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey...
[AMGREATNESS] After days of gossip and innuendo to the effect that the likely next Supreme Court Justice might just be some sort of pervert, Anonymous finally came forward and identified herself as a victim of a then 17-year-old inebriated Brett Kavanaugh who (she says) sexually manhandled her in 1982 when she was 15. More specifically, the woman now alleges that Kavanaugh and another student at a high-school party entered a room inebriated, pinned her to a bed, and then groped her while she was clothed. Young Kavanaugh then allegedly attempted to take her clothes off her while he and his classmate, Mark Judge, both laughed “maniacally.” She adds that she had sought “medical treatment” for her unspecified injuries.
"There's another bathroom in here," a voice I had just passed said quietly. I turned to find 
"Thanks," I said and entered the room. I was surprised when 
"Caleb and I are just friends," I said, letting some anger fill my tone. It was better than letting the fear escape. 
I am writing with information relevant in evaluating the current nominee to the Supreme Court. As a constituent, I expect that you will maintain this as confidential until we have further opportunity to speak. Brett Kavanaugh physically and sexually assaulted me during high school in the early 1980’s. He conducted these acts with the assistance of REDACTED.
The assault occurred in a suburban Maryland area home at a gathering that included me and four others. Kavanaugh physically pushed me into a bedroom as I was headed for a bathroom up a short stair well from the living room. They locked the door and played loud music precluding any successful attempt to yell for help. Kavanaugh was on top of me while laughing with REDACTED, who periodically jumped onto Kavanaugh. They both laughed as Kavanaugh tried to disrobe me in their highly inebriated state. With Kavanaugh’s hand over my mouth I feared he may inadvertently kill me.
From across the room a very drunken REDACTED said mixed words to Kavanaugh ranging from “go for it” to “stop.” At one point when REDACTED jumped onto the bed the weight on me was substantial. The pile toppled, and the two scrapped with each other. After a few attempts to get away, I was able to take this opportune moment to get up and run across to a hallway bathroom. I locked the bathroom door behind me. Both loudly stumbled down the stair well at which point other persons at the house were talking with them. I exited the bathroom, ran outside of the house and went home.
[AlMasdar] The 
[AlAhram] Belgian police shot and seriously 
[IsraelTimes] To mark 30 years since its first orbital launch, Defense Ministry publishes images from its newest spy satellite, showing Syrian tanks, an airfield... and Bashir al-Assad’s home
...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo...
[IsraelTimes] 14 servicemen aboard plane which went missing over Mediterranean; Syria claims 2 killed after Israel fires missiles from Lebanese airspace toward chemical weapons-linked facility
A Syrian facility linked to the country’s chemical weapons program was bombed on Monday night, triggering Syrian air defenses, state media reported.
