[ScienceAlert] On its surface, the plan was simple: gene-hack mosquitoes so their offspring immediately die, mix them with disease-spreading bugs in the wild, and watch the population drop off. Unfortunately, that didn't quite pan out.
The genetically-altered mosquitoes did mix with the wild population, and for a brief period the number of mosquitoes in Jacobino, Brazil did plummet, according to research published in Nature Scientific Reports last week.
But 18 months later the population bounced right back up, New Atlas reports - and even worse, the new genetic hybrids may be even more resilient to future attempts to quell their numbers. Alcock "Animal Behavior" ch - 13,14
#Iran President @HassanRouhani: Yemenis have not targeted a hospital, a school, or a grocery market [as Saudis did]; why are you so upset? They've attacked an industrial center to warn you! Learn from this warning.pic.twitter.com/R3yTMFwPn3
Posted by: 3dc ||
09/18/2019
10:53 ||
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#1
(Al Jazeera Live) Arab coalition spokesman: Iran is directly attacking civilian infrastructure. Cruise missile type identified as the Ya Ali- a new Iranian land attack missile with an estimated 700km range and carries a 200kg warhead
Saudi Arabia says Aramco attack originated from north
-WITH Iranian support
-Using Iranian-made cruise missiles & drones
“This attack could not have originated from Yemen” spokesman says
Saudi spokesman says attack was “unquestionably sponsored" by #Iran Note that this is not saying Iran did it. Sponsored is a waffle word.
#2
Pentagon Correspondent David Martin:"US intelligence never expected Iran would be so bold as to attack Saudi Arabia directly and as a result both countries were caught flat footed."
#3
NewsAlert: TEHRAN, #Iran (
@AP
) — State-run news agency says Iran sends warning to US that any action against Tehran 'will face an immediate answer'
#5
Houthi military spokesman: "We have dozens of targets in the UAE that we have selected... in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and they may be hit at any moment."
#11
For the Saudis to target Iranian oil facilities would make a lot of sense. The Iranians are probably selling oil on the sly to the Chinese (and perhaps Indians). Cutting off those revenues would rapidly bring Iran to the brink. They would literally run out of gas. It's tough to target elements of foreign armies like the Houthis, who are obviously mobile. Physical infrastructure like oil production facilities, however, can't readily be moved while remaining productive. In other words, they are sitting ducks for the JDAM's the Saudis have acquired a number of, assuming they haven't wasted them all on the Houthis.
#13
IIRC, Back during the Korean War, they wanted to blow some damns up to flood rivers and slow down the North Koreans and cut down power production, they dropped torpedo's that dived to the base of the damn, blew up and cracked them like eggs.
I have said time and time again, that feminism is akin to cancer on the world. Some will undoubtedly question my views on feminism; I agree that first wave, and even to a point second wave feminism did good things for woman and equality. The right to vote, wear clothes we feel comfortable in, and the ability to work outside the home to name a few.
As third wave feminism desperately needs to embrace a cause in order to stay both relevant and valid in the eyes of society, femimists have doubled down on men in general. They denounce "the patriarchy," the imaginary world that has men running everything and secretly holding women back from certain careers and advancement in the workplace. They even claim an imaginary wage gap is a problem. However, none of this exists in reality.
Women and men think differently. I know this may be a shock to some, but our brains do in fact work differently. Women are less likely to be attracted to careers that men are typically drawn to. Engineering, math, science and work in the trades are not something many women seek out to find careers in. Just as men are typically not administrative office support, human resources specialists and even teachers very often. This being said, nobody is holding women back from certain careers; they are choosing not to pursue those careers upon entering college and then the workforce.
Future historians will be arguing a lot - about how much damage giving k-12 into exclusive female care done the society.
#1
Actually life expectancy for women has declined to that of men. I foresee men doing better doing their own thing separate from women. In the industrialized world men are abstaining from women. Population declines show this. The men I see seem happier. I had three days off. I tell people the first day I rested. The second day I was still tired so I rested. The third day I decided to rest because I was to work that night. So how was I able to do that? I'm single.:)
#2
The really funny part of this is how feminism, by creating rich women, actually harmed them. Women require men of higher status than themselves to marry, and by creating high status women, has made marriage harder than ever. And the small pool of eligible men would never want a hard charging feminist harpy as a wife.
It's lose-lose all the way around, and the biggest losers are women.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
09/18/2019 13:50
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#4
Agree? Under the neo-SJW guilt by association principles that under Rantburg today operates, doesn't that make you a Mullah apologist? Please to be explaining.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
09/18/2019 15:54
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#5
Somethings you can only learn as you grow up Herb.
Thousands of dollars worth of bull semen has been destroyed after a cattle building exploded in fire early this morning.
Emergency services were called to Yarram Herd Services in Gippsland, Victoria, at about 3am where 100 cryogenic cylinders containing cattle semen exploded in the blaze.
It took 10 fire crews more than two hours to contain the fire at the building, which is a cattle breeding service.
Yarram Herd Services' committee vice-chairman Aaron Thomas said the loss would be a "huge blow" for farmers, with the cylinders worth between $500 and $1000 each.
"We're coming into the artificial insemination (AI) season so there would have been substantial amounts of semen inside the tanks that we've lost which was owned by our local farmers, and it can range in value from $5 per straw to $95 per straw," he told the ABC.
"A lot of farmers would have semen stock in the building, in those tanks, preparing for AI, so we've got that plus all of our herd testing equipment that was in there as well.
"So this is significant damage and it is going to have a flow-on affect on Yarram, especially after the drought that Yarram district has experienced over the last 12 months, it's going to be a real blow for sure." HAHAHAHAHA Sorry for the breeders, but that is just too damn funny
[Jpost] Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman has repeated demands for the establishment of civil marriage in Israel and the mandatory teaching of core curriculum studies in ultra-Orthodox primary schools as conditions for entering any new government.
He added that his party would also demand the implementation of public transport on Shabbat, and the repeal of the so-called mini-markets law preventing local authorities from increasing commercial activity in their cities on Shabbat.
The Yisrael Beytenu leader also called on President Reuven Rivlin to take "active role" in bringing about national unity government.
Speaking outside his home in the Nokdim settlement early Wednesday morning after Yisrael Beytenu looks to have nearly doubled its Knesset representation, Liberman repeated his assertion that his party would only enter a national unity government without sectoral parties. Third round of elections coming up. If they form Bibi-Gantz coalition, you stay outside.
#1
I scanned a couple of articles at the Jpost, and it seems like Bibi is still in, but ...
Can you interpret/clarify, g(r)om? Anybody?
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/18/2019 8:39
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#2
Bibi can't form a government without Liberman and the religious parties. But Liberman won't go with the religious.
Gantz can't form a government without Arab parties and Liberman - and (even if Gantz went bananas) Arabs won't go with Liberman
#7
Funny how the left here in the US points to coalition government as a superior model but they want to cut the entire center of CONUS out of their preferred governing coalition. Hypocrisy much?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
09/18/2019 10:01
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#8
Each form has it's advantages and disadvantages, Anakin. For example, in Israel leftards did not take over one of the two major parties - they've started a party of their own. Ditto, somebody like Obama (or Bush II) couldn't become an Israeli PM because he'd be eaten alive during coalition negotiations.
On the other hand, you've stability. Of course, stability not always good - not when both your parties stand for the same thing.
#11
This laundry list sounds like a first pass that will be whittled down as negotiations are concluded, and Lieberman gets to a point that reflects his 8 or 10 seat representation (out of 120). He might get to be kingmaker, but definitely not king.
#12
somebody like Obama (or Bush II) couldn't become an Israeli PM because he'd be eaten alive during coalition negotiations.
How?
According to a friend of a friend who was Mr. Obama’s classmate at Harvard law school, he was a pathetic negotiator even then. When a key part of getting the job is brilliant negotiating, someone who says, “Don’t call my bluff,” isn’t going to get very far.
#13
According to a friend of a friend who was Mr. Obama’s classmate at Harvard law school, he was a pathetic negotiator even then. When a key part of getting the job is brilliant negotiating, someone who says, “Don’t call my bluff,” isn’t going to get very far.
Whereas Dubya was a great p0ker player. Putin almost annexed Georgia, but Dubya prevented it by flying in a couple of US military transport planes.
[Jpost] A female terrorist was shot dead on Wednesday after she attempted to stab a police officer at the Qalandiya crossing near Jerusalem. No attacks yesterday. The crossings were closed - do you suppose there's a connection?
The woman, reportedly in her 50s, entered a car lane on foot, which aroused the suspicion of the guards at the Jerusalem-area checkpoint.
“Security personnel who saw that she was approaching them performed the proper arrest procedures and called for her to stop. She did not respond to their calls and took out a knife. As a result of this, a shot was fired at her leg and she was injured,” police said in a statement.
The woman was taken to Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus for treatment, where she was pronounced dead, the medical center said.
The article goes on to speculate possible suicide by soldier.
#2
"Don't get fancy and try for a leg shot, that works in movies, but in real life that's a hard target to hit under pressure, and if you miss you don't know where the round might ricochet to. If you hit you might hit the big artery in the leg they will bleed out before you can do anything; Do the two to the center of mass and if they are still standing one to the head...The transit cop stop to the pubic arch is also acceptable though the screaming of the perp gets on my nerves."
[Jpost] At least 10 militants were killed in airstrikes on Monday night by unidentified aircraft on pro-Iranian militias in Albukamal in Syria near the Iraqi border, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The raid targeted an ammunition depot and two other sites belonging to the Popular Mobilization Forces or other pro-Iranian factions in the area. Heavy material damage and 10 deaths were reported. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the death toll is expected to rise as some of the injured were in serious condition.
The director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights stated that according to the information that they have, the airstrikes were likely carried out by Israel. The pilots were overheard arguing in Hebrew about the elections?
[AnNahar] French police began clearing around 1,000 migrants colonists from a gymnasium near the northern port of Dunkirk on Tuesday after a court ruled it was a health and security hazard.
The mayor of Grande-Synthe in December 2018 opened up the sports hall to migrant families seeking shelter from the cold.
Since then, it has grown into a makeshift camp with around 800 people sleeping in tents pitched around the crammed gymnasium where some 170 people, mostly Iraqi Kurds hoping to reach Britannia, had been sheltering.
Tuesday's clearance operation began shortly after 8:00 am (0600 GMT).
Young men travelling alone were the first to board buses that will take them to shelters around the region, where they can apply for asylum.
Families were to be moved later.
Northern La Belle France has long been a magnet for people seeking to smuggle themselves to Britannia in the tens of thousands of trucks and cars that travel daily between the countries on ferries and trains.
The area around Grande-Synthe has traditionally drawn Iraqi Kurds and has been repeatedly cleared in recent years.
Knowing this, why on earth did the mayor donate a community asset to people who should not have been in the area?
A court in the regional city of Lille ordered the gymnasium shut on September 4 following complaints from local authorities and residents about violence, garbage and the presence of people-smugglers among the migrants colonists.
French authorities have had a policy of trying to prevent migrants colonists forming camps since 2016 when they razed a notorious illegal squat nicknamed the "Jungle" near the port of Calais which was home to 10,000 people at its height.
But rights groups have criticised police tactics and migrants colonists have begun taking every greater risks to try reach Britannia, including trying to cross the Channel -- the world's busiest shipping lane -- in small boats.
In December, the country's human rights When they're defined by the state or an NGO they don't mean much... ombudsman denounced the "extreme destitution" suffered by people camping out or sleeping under bridges in the Calais area.
The ombudsman, Jacques Toubon, accused the authorities of "trying to make (migrants colonists) invisible" by regularly tearing down their camps without providing them with viable alternatives.
French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged to speed up the asylum claims process for people deemed to be bona fide refugees, while vowing to accelerate the deportation of so-called economic migrants colonists.
On Monday, he told his ministers that the government needed to tackle the issue of immigration headlong, warning that "by claiming to be humanist, sometimes we are too laxist."
[AnNahar] Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan, the abbreviation IRGC is a cognate form of Stürmabteilung (or SA), the term Supreme Guide is a cognate form of either Shah or Führer or maybe both, and they hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... has charged three detained Australians with spying, judiciary front man Gholamhossein Esmaili said on Tuesday, cited by Tasnim news agency.
Two of the Australians were alleged to have used a drone to take pictures of military sites, while a third was accused of spying for another country, Esmaili said, without naming them.
[AlAhram] A Minya criminal court has given life sentences to 11 defendants and 15 year prison terms to 106 others in a mass trial for offences related to an attack on a cop shoppe in 2013.
The convicted were charged in relation to the storming of Samalout cop shoppe in Minya and the setting of a court building and administrative prosecution headquarters on fire.
The events took place following the dispersal of the Islamist protest camps at Rabaa and Nahda squares in August 2013.
The court sentenced 30 others to prison terms of between three and five years.
The convicted were found guilty of charges including joining an outlawed group, inciting violence, and vandalism of public and police institutions.
Killed on D-Day, 6 June 1944 when his C-47 was shot down.
1LT Thomas Meehan III, 0-437484E Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR) 101st Airborne Division
"England, 26 May, 1944 Dearest: Well, I see in the papers that the Anzio Beachhead is no longer that, and that Cassino has fallen. Looks like "we ain’t losin’ ".
Looking back at the grim days of ’40-’41-’42, it seems hardly possible that we should have come so far. Those were grim years and we in the States hardly realized it. Now the shoe is on the other foot and the war has probably been decided in Europe.
Yet, somehow I wonder about this "peace" as all the writers are describing it. I’m afraid that I am a pessimist with little faith in the realization that any peace will be compromise, not everlasting. I suppose that people, being as they are, have thought and tried world peace for thousands of centuries, but war, like the unwanted cat, comes back. All we want is our way of life and all the handshaking and backslapping in the world won’t change our ideas to conform with the other fellows’. The question is not, "How can we insure a permanent peace", but "how can we have peace for the maximum length of time and still be ourselves, unyieldingly?" Natural, human, inevitable. And so, generation after generation has its day of crawling in filth and extracting the life of some other joker that only wanted peace, but a different brand of it. We’re fortunate in being Americans.
At least we don’t step on the underdog. I wonder if that’s because there are no "Americans" ‐ only a stew of immigrants, or if it’s because the earth from which we exist has been so kind to us and our forefathers: or if it’s because the "American" is the offspring of the logical European who hated oppression and loved freedom beyond life.
Those great mountains and the tall timber; the cool deep lakes and broad rivers; the green valleys and white farmhouses; the air, the sea and wind; the plains and great cities; the smell of living ‐ all must be the cause of it. And yet, with all that, we can’t get away from the rest. For everyone of our millions who has that treasure in his hand there’s another million crying for that victory of life. And for each of us who wants to live in happiness and give happiness, there’s another different sort of person wanting to take it away.
Those people always manage to have their say, and Mars is always close at hand. We know how to win wars. We must learn now to win peace. Stick our noses in the affairs of the world. Learn politics as well as killing. Make the world accept peace whether they damn well like it or not. Here is the dove, and here is the bayonet.
May we never see the day again that "World Peaceways"[1] and like organizations dull our senses and make us anything but realists. If I ever have a son, I don’t want him to go through this again, but I want him powerful enough that no one will be fool enough to touch him. He and America should be strong as hell and kind as Christ. That’s the only insurance until human nature becomes a tangible thing that can be adjusted and made workable." Thomas Meehan, III
BLUF:
[RenewAmerica] "No common factor in the water, air, local pesticides, diet or even building materials and clothing can explain the emergence and relentless increase in this serious, life-long neurodevelopmental disorder," she stated.
"What all industrial countries do have in common," she added, "is...the use of routine prenatal ultrasound on pregnant women. In countries with nationalized healthcare, where virtually all pregnant women are exposed to ultrasound, the autism rates are even higher than in the U.S., where due to disparities in income and health insurance, some 30 percent of pregnant women do not yet undergo ultrasound scanning."
The cause of autism, Rodgers continues, "has been pinned on everything from 'emotionally remote' mothers...to vaccines, genetics, immunological disorders, environmental toxins and maternal infections, [but] a far simpler possibility...is the pervasive use of prenatal ultrasound, which can cause potentially dangerous thermal effects.
#4
Something interesting I saw on Facebook the other day: dyslexia was not an issue until literacy became the norm, and autism similarly follows as the world has become louder and more distracting, with considerably more interactions with strangers who don’t understand one’s little eccentricities instad of living on a farm or small town in a tight knit community.
#7
Or as 'Burger Seafarious said years ago, "What's wrong with a little lysdexia?"
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/18/2019 10:20
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#8
TW - so you're saying it's not actually a new physical phenom, it just appears that way because of this new label + more frequent diagnosis?
I believe she is, and I agree. In fact, I'll go a little further, and say that a society filled with people who are Autistic, have Down syndrome, or are otherwise "differently abled" is normal. Even desirable, as such people bring their families benefits that aren't immediately apparent. It's just that 100 years later we're still suffering from the aftershocks of the Eugenics movement, which was striving for a society made up on "perfect" people.
#9
Having spent a fair bit of time around autistic folks of various stripes, I think there's not a single cause, but a variety of autisms. And at least one variety is obviously genetic.
Since the onset of autism isn't always immediate, some have suspected that stories about changelings describe autistic youngsters. https://adc.bmj.com/content/90/3/271.full
Posted by: james ||
09/18/2019 23:16
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[WSJ] Since the start of the Trump-Russia collusion fantasy, we’ve seen a pattern: On the eve of any report or fact that might undermine that narrative, the forces behind the FBI investigation leak a "bombshell" claim designed to further justify their actions. Bear this in mind when reading the new desperate‐and highly irresponsible‐reports about that supposed "high-value" Russian spy.
First CNN, and now a volley of outlets, are claiming that the U.S. government in 2017 was forced to pull out‐or "exfiltrate"‐a supremely covert Russian source. According to reports, this source had sent information to the U.S. for decades, had risen high in the Russian national-security infrastructure, and had access to Russian President Vladimir Putin. More notable: All the stories, to the last, stress that this source was crucial to U.S. intelligence officials’ alarm and reaction to Russian interference in the 2016 election.
A fight has since broken out over the reason the U.S. moved to extract the source. CNN (ludicrously) claims it is because President Donald Trump mishandled classified information. Every other outlet cites officials noting their concern that the U.S. media (in thrall to the collusion narrative) might blow the source’s cover. But this brouhaha is a side issue to the vastly more consequential point: There’s a reason this story is appearing now, and therefore a reason to doubt its full accuracy.
Continued on Page 49
An article from a NY school teacher in 1951.
[FEE.org] As a teacher, I found that the socialist-communist idea of taking "from each according to his abilities," and giving "to each according to his needs" was generally accepted without question by most students. In an effort to explain the fallacy in this theory, I sometimes tried this approach:
When one of the brighter or harder-working students made a grade of 95 on a test, I suggested that I take away 20 points and give them to a student who had made only 55 points on his test. Thus each would contribute according to his abilities and‐since both would have a passing mark‐each would receive according to his needs. After I juggled the grades of all the other students in this fashion, the result was usually a "common ownership" grade of between 75 and 80‐the minimum needed for passing, or for survival. Then I speculated with the students as to the probable results if I actually used the socialistic theory for grading papers.
First, the highly productive students‐and they are always a minority in school as well as in life‐would soon lose all incentive for producing. Why strive to make a high grade if part of it is taken from you by "authority" and given to someone else?
Second, the less productive students‐a majority in school as elsewhere‐would, for a time, be relieved of the necessity to study or to produce. This socialist-communist system would continue until the high producers had sunk‐or had been driven down‐to the level of the low producers. At that point, in order for anyone to survive, the "authority" would have no alternative but to begin a system of compulsory labor and punishments against even the low producers. They, of course, would then complain bitterly, but without understanding.
Finally I returned the discussion to the ideas of freedom and enterprise‐the market economy‐where each person has freedom of choice and is responsible for his own decisions and welfare.
Gratifyingly enough, most of my students then understood what I meant when I explained that socialism‐even in a democracy‐would eventually result in a living death for all except the "authorities" and a few of their favorite lackeys. Nowadays you would be fired before you can say "Jack Robinson", bub. Probably sued too for harming the students' sensitive souls.
#1
As a student, I used help my under-productive colleagues cheat in exams, supplying them with answers and often using my spare time to complete their projects. I find that a better model.
Made me smarter and readier for the real world, while they ended up being muscle for me when I needed them in those 'tender years'.
#2
Here in America, the judiciary implemented the program in a number of cities, called it busing. Initiated upper and middle class (both white and black) flight from the cities. (See - Detroit).
In the 20th Century the abomination was "I was only obeying orders". In the 21st Century it will "We meant well".
[DavidWarrenOnline] There is, and there has always been, little overlap between the world of politics and the world of truth. This is something to bear in mind during a season of voting, as the politicians stake their claims and give their prescriptions for all that ails us.
Example: a large bureaucracy will, in approximately 100 percent of cases, become extremely wasteful, and essentially corrupt. It will perpetuate the "problem" that it was founded to solve, and at its most creative, invent new and quite imaginative evils. It will become a vested interest ‐ an "economic player" in its own right ‐ and spread, like a cancer, well beyond the flesh it first inhabited. Any attempt to restrain it will then engender new bureaucracies. The idea of a "humane" bureaucracy is a contradiction of terms. There is no such thing.
Gentle reader must understand that I am not speaking only of "guvmint," but of bureaucracy, at large. The thing is not necessarily a government department. Any big corporation will quickly show symptoms. The only difference between "public" and "private" is in longevity. A private bureaucracy will kill its host, but thanks to the power of taxation, a public bureaucracy can be long sustained. It is also backed by law and police action, which even today is more effective than mere pointless rules and regulations. The latter, however, are more nimble in expansion, and prepare the ground for law ‐ the full spiritual stasis.
This was, anyway, the view of that "Austrian school economist," Ludwig von Mises, proponent like the rest in that school of "classical liberalism." His hatred of bureaucracy was a wonderful, animated thing. In his great book, Human Action, and many others, he could become almost boring on the topic. What distinguishes the Austrian school from, say, the famous Chicago school of Milton Friedman and his ilk, was its European origin. (They were, however, consciously allied.) The "Austrians" go back, to Catholic antecedents, and their interests are not reducible to "pure economics" (scare quotes because there is no such thing). Over time it extended to broad social questions, and through a constant interest in the history of ideas. These were multilingual and multicultural, in the manner of the old Habsburg empire; where our American classical liberalism has been almost unilingually English, provincially distrustful of foreign thinkers, and buzzing with statistics. (You’ll need a degree in math.) Actually, IMO, statistics have very little to do with math. And, "mathematical economics" are a joke.
...One may see the great division in Western thought and politics, which the Austrian-school Friedrich Hayek traced back to Bacon and Descartes, and can be traced farther to the Nominalists of the later Middle Ages. Humans live in freedom and make choices, to be restrained only by the plainest moral codes. Or, by the alternative thesis, we are components of a machine, which the man with Power can monkey with, by implanting stimuli here and there.
We are creatures of God, or ‐ we are replaceable parts in a bureaucracy. Well, I'm an evolutionary biologist, but I get your point
[CTC] This September 11th, a new generation is taking up the mantle in the fight against terrorism. "Later this year, a U.S. service member is likely to be deployed to Afghanistan who was not yet born on September 11, 2001," Daniel Byman notes in our feature article on the jihadi terror threat facing the United States 18 years later. He assesses "although the operational freedom of jihadi groups is constricted by U.S. and allied counterterrorism efforts, the jihadi cause as a whole has far more local and regional influence than it did in the years before 9/11, it is better able to inspire individuals in the West to act on its behalf, and groups have proven resilient despite the fierce U.S.-led onslaught."
Our interview is with Joseph Maguire, the United States’ Acting Director of National Intelligence. He says that "since the catastrophic attacks on 9/11, we have significantly diminished the ability of jihadists to strike the U.S. by removing hundreds of leaders and operatives, disrupting dozens of networks and plots, and degrading safe havens. But some jihadist groups still have that intent, not only to target the homeland but also our interests overseas. They are continually adapting to setbacks by modifying their tactics, seeking out alternative safe havens, and using new and emerging technologies to communicate, recruit, and conduct attacks. This makes for an increasingly diverse and unpredictable threat." As the terror threat evolves, Acting Director Maguire stresses the importance of addressing the still-significant security challenges posed by the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq, and beyond given the group still poses a "tremendous threat" and has "all the recipes" for a resurgence.
Amira Jadoon and Andrew Mines examine Islamic State Khorasan’s leadership losses between 2015 and 2018 by leadership tier, year, and geography. Their findings highlight "the group’s tenacious presence in Nangarhar (Afghanistan) and Baluchistan (Pakistan), despite declines in overall number of attacks. An important factor contributing to ISK’s resiliency appears to be rooted in its steady recruitment of experienced Pakistani militants that sustain its leadership ranks." Two years after the Marawi siege in the Philippines, Julie Chernov Hwang outlines the motivations for joining the Maute Group based on her interviews with 25 former members of the jihadi group and a related faction. Aaron Zelin and Katherine Bauer outline the significant progress Tunisia has made over the past two years in developing domestic counter-terrorism finance capabilities.
Paul Cruickshank, Editor in Chief
Posted by: Besoeker ||
09/18/2019
02:54 ||
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#1
Saw this presentation in 2017. Back then it was 50 million. Reduces critical war strategy to a match between two really glitchy AIs. Funny that a near-brexit UK should feature this grim wishful think scare on their part, given the current scenario. I think the UK overly criticizes the rest of the world possessing nukes.
Alexander Glaser of Princeton University (the principal researcher here) is a fine academic and scientist. He's contributed to the science of detection of nuclear stockpiles and techniques for de-weaponization of weapons-grade. Co-authored a few papers with Indian nuclear scientists. One of the anti-nuke do-gooders.
#6
Mr.President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops! Uh, depending on the breaks.
Gen. "Buck" Turgidson, Dr. Strangelove, 1964
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
09/18/2019 9:25
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#7
Plus all the following deaths that would come in multiple waves due to lack of food then medicine, healthcare, looting, gangs, etc..
#9
Second Wave, Tier Five, IIRC, for Oklahoma City. State capitol, nexus of railroad/insterstate highway bridges, AND Tinker AFB -- the home of OCAMA where B-52s were repaired. So 1-3 ground burst to take out any hardened structures in Tinker AFB (the others to knock down bridges)...
At 20 miles from the center of Tinker AFB I knew as a kid and teenager that a 20-megaton airburst thermonuclear "sunrise" was a strong possibility. Not a fun period, no. And the millennials worry about Global Warming ... Heh!
#11
What about a simulation of a Saudi-Pak nuke attack on Iran, with India joining the party against Pak?
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/18/2019 11:00
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#12
I've been sweating this out since I was four years old but Ancient Alien theorist claim the UFOs will disable all the missiles so it ain't gonna happen.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
09/18/2019 11:49
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#13
Pak missiles are probably more likely to blow up the Paks than anybody else.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
09/18/2019 11:52
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#14
Living close to a NATO facility is the best location if WW3 breaks out. At least the most merciful one.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
09/18/2019 14:45
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#15
I remember my first visit to the Pentagon and the ground zero hotdog stand with the bullseye on the
[Breitbart] Yet another greenie expedition to the Arctic to raise awareness of ‘global warming’ has been scuppered by unexpected large quantities of ice. This brings to a total of six the number of Ship of Fools expeditions where weather reality has made a mockery of climate theory.
According to Maritime Bulletin:
Arctic tours ship MS MALMO with 16 passengers on board got stuck in ice on Sep 3 off Longyearbyen, Svalbard Archipelago, halfway between Norway and North Pole. The ship is on Arctic tour with Climate Change documentary film team, and tourists, concerned with Climate Change and melting Arctic ice. All 16 Climate Change warriors were evacuated by helicopter in challenging conditions, all are safe. 7 crew remains on board, waiting for Coast Guard ship assistance.
The reporter, Erofey Schkvarkin clearly has a sense of humour. He adds:
Something is very wrong with Arctic ice, instead of melting as ordered by UN/IPCC, it captured the ship with Climate Change Warriors.
It appears the mainstream media has failed to get the memo. Here is a tweet from Reuters which appeared after the ship got stuck in ice. (h/t Stewgreen)
[Politico] In 1954, a prison doctor in Kentucky isolated seven black inmates and fed them "double, triple and quadruple" doses of LSD for 77 days straight. No one knows what became of the victims. They may have died without knowing they were part of the CIA’s highly secretive program to develop ways to control minds‐a program based out of a little-known Army base with a dark past, Fort Detrick.
Suburban sprawl has engulfed Fort Detrick, an Army base 50 miles from Washington in the Maryland town of Frederick. Seventy-six years ago, however, when the Army selected Detrick as the place to develop its super-secret plans to wage germ warfare, the area around the base looked much different. In fact, it was chosen for its isolation. That’s because Detrick, still thriving today as the Army’s principal base for biological research and now encompassing nearly 600 buildings on 13,000 acres, was for years the nerve center of the CIA’s hidden chemical and mind control empire.
[MAIL] A prominent California Democratic donor has been charged with running a drug house where two men died of overdose and a third nearly died last week.
Edward Buck was charged Tuesday.
Prosecutors are asking that he be held on $4 million bail, calling Buck 'a violent, dangerous sexual predator' who offered drugs, money and shelter to mainly addicted and homeless men in exchange for participating in sexual fetishes, including administering dangerous drug doses.
Prosecutors allege Buck provided the meth that killed two men who were found in his apartment in 2017 and this January.
Gemmel Moore, 26, died in 2017. Timothy Dean, 55, died early this year.
Authorities allege that Buck personally injected drugs into a man who survived an overdose this month.
According to prosecutors, the man went to Buck's apartment on September 4.
It was there that Buck 'personally and deliberately' administered a large dose of methamphetamine, according to the Los Angeles Times.
#4
Well Epstein is dead, Buck isn't. Latest victim, this witness, survived, ran out and called for help. So that's why they arrested him. Expect Buck to be memory-holed in a month.
Posted by: Charles ||
09/18/2019 5:59
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#5
So the New York Slime just identified the wrong person sticking their johnson in someone's face?
[Washington Examiner] Optimism in the U.S. construction industry has reached a record high, with builders forced to push off work because finding help is difficult due to the historic unemployment low.
The new Commercial Construction Index, compiled by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and USG Corp., climbed to a record high in the third quarter, with 77% of commercial contractors optimistic about their future.
The index, provided to Secrets in advance of its release, also found that "half of all contractors" expect higher revenue and the expectations for bigger profits next year also surged.
"Contractors are thinking about the future and are optimistic about what’s ahead," said Christopher Griffin, CEO of USG Corporation. "Continued levels of confidence around backlog and profit suggest nonresidential construction will continue to play an important role in overall sector growth," he added.
The Chamber noted that the industry is running short of workers and that 61% of commercial contractors plan to hire in the next six months.
#1
Gee... maybe we should - I dunno - raise wages, tighten the labor market even further by kicking out the illegals, and give millions of young native-born American men of all races a chance to earn a living wage and actually support a family?
Which party in 2019 would support such an outlandish notion?
[Babylon Bee] U.S.‐After California added Iowa to its growing list of states to which the government will not fund trips, all the other states began clamoring to get added to this ban list.
"Wait---there's a way to get Californian politicians banned from traveling here? Where do we sign up?" said one state legislator in Georgia. "Is there a waiting list? Wait---all we have to do is refuse to fund gender transition surgeries!?! That's amazing!"
While just eleven states are currently on the list, dozens more are applying. Soon, almost every state except Oregon and New York will be on the list, and peace and utopia will break out across the nation as CA politicians will no longer be able to go there and say weird things and do even dumber things.
The states were disappointed to learn that the ban didn't include all Californians, but they said banning just the politicians was a good start, since they're the ones who ruined the state to begin with.
Add another item to the bucket list that the judiciary has done to screw up the country, that being tossing the minimal residency time before people can vote in local elections.
#5
We moved from CA to Idaho. In our case, we were political refugees. Simple entrance exam , such as "How many genders are there?"Ans: greater than 2 is a fail or "How much ammo do you need?" Ans: More than you have.
A few simple questions should weed out the un-deplorables
[MIL.com] KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany -- The Army Reserve activated seven new units this week, including a regional support group capable of supporting thousands of soldiers, such as those in Poland, where troops are deployed to deter Russian activities.
Col. Scott K. Thomson, deputy commander of the 7th Mission Support Command, presided over the activation ceremony for the 510th Regional Support Group and six subordinate units at U.S. Army Garrison Rheinland-Pfalz, Sembach Kaserne.
"It's becoming increasingly clear that our Army Reserve units and soldiers in Europe are indispensable to the security posture to European Command, NATO and United States Army Europe," Thomson was quoted as saying in an Army statement.
Several existing 7th MSC units will be aligned under the 510th RSG to support both U.S. European Command and U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR).
The 510th is the only forward-stationed regional support group "organic to" USAREUR, the Army said. It has been staffing up in preparation for activation since late 2017 and is expected to oversee nearly a dozen units.
The brigade-level command and headquarters can support base camp operations for 6,000 or more soldiers in-theater, such as the more than 4,500 troops deployed on a rotational basis at about half a dozen bases in Poland, the Army said.
[NEON NETTLE] The Democratic Party, in coordination with the Clinton White House, hired and trained thousands of operatives to infiltrate talk radio posing as real people, in an attempt to manipulate public opinion, according to newly emerged documents.The elaborate operation was carried out by the Democratic National Committee and Bill Clinton's administration during the 1990s as was revealed in recently uncovered documents from the Clinton Presidential Library.The DNC launched the Talk Radio Initiative (TRI) ahead of Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign.The program trained thousands of operatives to conduct surveillance of radio station contents, call into their radio shows, and covertly sow Democratic talking points while posing as regular listeners.
#5
Limbaugh figured this out 20+ years ago - refers to them "seminar callers". Kinda old news if you ask me.
It helps to have periodic reminders of this, and the young'uns may have never heard about it until he mentioned it again last week. I did like the Beatles parody song about it - nice touch!
[KhaamaPress] The security forces killed at least 35 Taliban militants including many Pakistani nationals in South-eastern Ghazni province.
The Ghazni Governor’s Office said in a statement that the Special Forces conducted operations in Mangoor, Qarabaghi and Kala Ghach areas located in the outskirts of Ghazni city.
The statement further added that the security forces killed at least 35 Taliban militants including 10 Pakistani nationals.
Furthermore, the Governor’s Office said the security forces also killed Mohammad Tahir alias Khaksar and Omar Khalid, two local commanders of Taliban.
The security forces also killed Hemat, the leader in charge of the financial affairs of Taliban for Ghazni and Malang, the recruitment chief of the group.
The security forces confiscated 12 Ak-47 rifles, 2 rocket launchers, a PKM machine gun and Dragunov sniper rifle during the operation, the statement added.
[KhaamaPress] The security forces conducted Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s in four provinces in the past 24 hours, killing more than 20 Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... and ISIS ...embracing their inner Islamic Brute... bully boys.
The military officials said Tuesday that the security forces conducted airstrikes in Qarah Bagh and Ghazni districts of Ghazni province which killed 4 Talibs.
The officials further added that the airstrikes also destroyed two boom-mobiles.
Furthermore, an airstrike killed 7 Talibs in Chak-e Wardak district of Wardak province.
The officials also added that airstrikes in Warduj district of Badakhshan province killed 9 Talibs.
Meanwhile, ...back at the pie fight, Bella opened her mouth at precisely the wrong moment... an airstrike in Pachir Wa Agam district of Nangarhar The unfortunate Afghan province located adjacent to Mohmand, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. The capital is Jalalabad. The province was the fief of Younus Khalis after the Soviets departed and one of his sons is the current provincial Taliban commander. Nangarhar is Haqqani country.. killed 3 ISIS Khurasan bully boys, the officials added.
[KhaamaPress] The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan, the abbreviation IRGC is a cognate form of Stürmabteilung (or SA), the term Supreme Guide is a cognate form of either Shah or Führer or maybe both, and they hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... confirmed the visit by Taliban ...Arabic for students... delegation to Tehran, the state media reported.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry front man Abbas Mousavi quoted by local media said "In the framework of Iran’s comprehensive consultations with all parties in Afghanistan, a Taliban political delegation visited our country recently to discuss the latest developments in Afghanistan."
Suhail Shaheen, a spokesperson for the political office of Taliban had earlier said a Taliban delegation led by deputy political chief of Taliban Abdul Salam Hanafi visited Tehran on 16th of September to meet with the brass hats of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran.
Shaheen further added that the Taliban delegation held talks regarding the development projects of Iran in the country and safeguarding of such projects as well as efforts for lasting peace in Afghanistan.
The Taliban delegation had earlier visited Moscow to hold talks with the Russian officials in the wake of U.S.-Taliban peace talks cancellation.
[KhaamaPress] The Taliban ...mindless ferocity in a turban... group grabbed credit for the earth-shattering kabooms in Kabul city and Parwan provinces.
Taliban front man Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement that a jacket wallah detonated his explosives close to the Personnel Department of the Ministry of Defense in Kabul city this afternoon.
Mujahid further added that another suicide bomber of the group detonated his explosives close to an election rally in Charikar city.
Furthermore, Mujahid claimed that that the two attacks inflicted heavy casualties on security personnel.
However, the man who has no enemies isn't anybody and has never done anything... the officials in Parwan are saying that the attack close to election rally of Ashraf Ghani ...former chancellor of Kabul University, now president of Afghanistan. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money... killed more than 26 people and maimed 42 others, mostly civilians.
Meanwhile, ...back at the revival hall, the pastor had finally been wrestled from the pulpit. Y'got the wrong guy! he yelled just before Sergeant Malone's billy club landed... the Ministry of Interior said the suicide kaboom close to Massoud Square in Kabul city killed 22 civilians and maimed at least 38 others.
[KhaamaPress] Taliban ...Arabic for students... ’s political office in Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... has claimed that Russia supports Taliban’s stance regarding the peace deal and withdrawal of the foreign forces from Afghanistan as per the peace agreement.
Suhail Shaheen, a front man for the political office of Taliban said in a Twitter post a Taliban delegation led by Sher Abbas Stanikzai ...Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, Head of the Taliban political office in Doha. He was a member of Rassoul Sayyaf's group in the war against the Soviets.... viisted Moscow and clarified the group’s stance during the meeting with the Russia’s special envoy Zamir Kabulov.
Shaheen went on to claim that Moscow supported Taliban’s stance and withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan as per the peace deal.
The visit by Taliban delegation to Moscow apparently took place after the U.S. President Donald Trump ...Perhaps no man has ever had as much fun being president of the US... called off peace talks with Taliban in the wake of a series of deadly attacks.
[KhaamaPress] The Afghan Special Forces killed or detained at least 12 Talibs and destroyed multiple caches of weapons in three provinces.
The military officials said Tuesday the Afghan Special Forces killed 6 Talibs during a raid in Sayyidabad district of Wardak province.
The officials further added that the Special Forces destroyed a small cache of weapons during a patrol in Maidan Shahr district of Wardak.
Furthermore, the Special Force killed a Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... bully boy and arrested 5 others in Chimtal district of Balkh province.
The Special Forces also destroyed a cache of weapons of Taliban during a separate patrol in Charkh district of Pashtun-infested Logar.
#2
They sure seem to have a more effective kill-rate than the expensive arclight strikes. If indeed these numbers are accurate, the taliban either number in hundred thousands, or they should be capitulating to the Afghans by now.
Best wishes for figuring it all out this time, guys.
[Rudaw] Iraqi President Barham Salih arrived in the Kurdistan Regional capital Erbil on Tuesday evening at the head of a delegation sent to discuss oil, the budget, and territorial disputes ‐ hot topics that have long caused ruptures between the semi-autonomous region and the federal government.
Delegations have shuttled back and forth between Erbil and Baghdad in recent months as relations between the two continue to improve after hitting their lowest ebb in late-2017.
Erbil and Baghdad have formed committees for talks on the joint administration of the disputed territories, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)’s share of the federal budget, and the touchy subject of independent oil sales.
Continued on Page 49
[Townhall] America's top source of imported oil (43 percent of it) is Canada. As fellow NATO members, an attack on Canada would be considered an attack on the United States, and a response could include the use of armed force. As with any declaration of war, this would require congressional approval, but the bottom line is that Canada is the very definition of a U.S. ally in diplomatic terms.
The same doesn't hold true for America's second-largest oil supplier, Saudi Arabia (9 percent). There is no agreement or framework for the U.S. to respond to an attack on Saudi soil, let alone any obligation to do so. The Saudis are commonly referred to as American allies, even though they really aren't in any official sense. They do, however, purchase U.S. weapons and represent significant oil imports, so they are trading partners and commercial allies. That's about as far as it goes.
So when a Saudi oil facility was attacked from the air over the weekend, knocking out roughly half of its oil production capacity, U.S. President Donald Trump's knee-jerk response (on Twitter, of course) was troubling.
"Saudi Arabia oil supply was attacked," Trump tweeted. "There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!"
First of all, why is there only "reason to believe" that U.S. officials know who the culprit is when the region in question is one of the most surveilled on the planet? We should know who did it, right down to the precise trajectory of the attack. Let's see the evidence.
And why would America, with all its spy technology and resources, be "waiting to hear" from the Saudis about who they decide to blame? Cause he wants them to come begging, before he makes an offer. And this time around, IMO, it's going to cost them plenty.
...America has flooded Saudi Arabia with weapons and military assistance. Placing a missile system in the paws of a panda bear would have been more productive. The Saudis have been employing America's finest weaponry to fight the pro-Iranian Houthis for control of neighboring Yemen and have been losing to guys in flip-flops. It's so embarrassing that American defense manufacturers should sue the Saudis for defaming their products. House of Saud (it's not really a country) can't afford to have real military - because coup.
...The best thing Trump can do is cut off all military assistance and arms sales to the Saudis and focus on what he can control to America's benefit: total North American energy independence. It's not about Saudis, it's about Iran, missy.
#1
Due to the shale oil revolution, the US is now self-sufficient in petroleum. We can now tell those Saudi pieces of shit who did 9/11 to go and fuck their camels, and they can keep their polluting fossil fuel in the ground where it belongs.
Once upon a time we were utterly dependent on Saudi oil. That time has passed.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
09/18/2019 1:53
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#2
Alas, the influence a nation or organization has on the world is based on how well it respects its commitments to others when the others are subject to attack.
UN piece keeping took a hit that it has never recovered from when it abandoned its role as peacekeeper when it withdrew at Nasser's request from Sinai when he became belligerent toward Israel.
Chamberlain's refusal to help Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939 led Stalin to approach Hitler, and them jointly to start WWII.
US abandonment of its commitment to Ukraine when under attack from Russia, which had been made in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons, all immensely weakened respect and influence of those who ignored their commitments and all quickly led to war.
The reasons given here for abandoning long term commitments would have the same effects. Wiping out the bases used this attack and destroying the Iranina navy would be an appropriate mild response.
Destroying i
Iran's nuclear sites would be stronger.
At the same time Israel will have to go on war footing and should be prepared to destroy Hezbollah entirely if there is a Lebanese response.
Without some response now, there will be a worse problem soon. When aggressors think they are successful, they expand their aggressions.
Posted by: Daniel ||
09/18/2019 3:27
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#3
Although I tend to agree about wanting to get involved a huge amount of the worlds oil comes out of Saudi Arabia and if the world economy tanks that would be bad for the US.
#4
What commitments do we have to Saudi Arabia? Why are we not engaging in "regime change" to install a democratic government? You know, like we're doing in Venezuela and Iran?
It is best for everyone, especially Americans, if we disentangle ourselves from these terrorist camel fucking assholes. The sooner the better. If Europeans were serious about their interests they would have paid their fair share of NATO. Obviously they're not worried, hence Nordstream 2. Why must we create a war on their behalf, one they never asked for and will vehemently protest?
America First!
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
09/18/2019 13:46
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#5
Regime change? I think you misread the temperament of the US population right now. Half is trying to regime change our own government.
[DAWN] LAHORE: A man allegedly slashed his wife’s nose over a domestic issue in the jurisdiction of Factory Area police on Monday.
Sajjad Ahmad also shaved off his wife’s head after subjecting her to severe torture with plastic pipes, kicks and punches.
Some neighbours rushed to Ahmad’s house on hearing the cries of Shazia and her minor children, who were terrified at seeing their mother seriously injured. Shazia and Ahmad lived in Sitara Colony and the couple had six children — four daughters and two sons.
The neighbours rescued Shazia and alerted police, who took her to the Lahore General Hospital with severe bleeding.
The neighbours told police that Ahmad would torture his wife quite often, adding that he used to beat her with pipes and iron roads over petty domestic matters, and the neighbours had several times rescued her.
A doctor told Dawn that Shazia had lost her nose, adding that she had been admitted for a complicated facial surgery where they would give her an artificial nose.
Shazia told police that she was visiting one of her daughters’ in-laws in the same locality when her husband stormed in. He took her back home, locked the gate and attacked her with a plastic pipe. She claimed that Ahmad told her he had spent money on her health that he was to pay as monthly installment to a shopkeeper. He then took out a knife from a cupboard and chopped off her nose besides subjecting her to torture, she added.
Police said a case had been lodged against the suspect on the complaint of Shazia and a police team dispatched to arrest him. Ahmad had fled from the scene shortly after committing the crime, they added.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2019
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#1
Yet another sad case of construction materials violence! Does it never occur to the Paks that banning rebar, pipe, bamboo and whatnot could reduce injuries caused by these deadly objects by nearly 100 percent?
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Ottoman Turkish military sent a new armored convoy to the northern countryside of the Hama Governorate this week amid their regime’s ongoing peace talks with Russia and Iran.
According to a report from the Hama Governorate, the Ottoman Turkish military sent an armored convoy consisting of five vehicles and several soldiers to their observation post in the town of Sheir Magher.
The report added that the convoy is meant to reinforce the Ottoman Turkish Army’s observation post in Sheir Magher, as hostilities between the Syrian military and holy warrior forces could flare up in the coming days if the Ankara peace talks fall apart.
The Sheir Magher observation post has also been the target of Syrian Army attacks in the past, as this small installation is located along the front-lines in the Hama Governorate.
[FOXBUSINESS] The city of Phoenix cannot compel an art studio owned by two Christians to design wedding invitations for same-sex couples, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Monday in a 4-3 decision.
Joanna Duka and Breanna Koski, who run Brush & Nib Studio, potentially faced $2,500 in fines and six months in jail for violating Phoenix's 2013 ordinance that prohibited discrimination based on "sexual orientation, gender identity or expression."
"Duka and Koski’s beliefs about same-sex marriage may seem old-fashioned, or even offensive to some," wrote Justice Andrew Gould in the opinion of the court. "But the guarantees of free speech and freedom of religion are not only for those who are deemed sufficiently enlightened, advanced, or progressive."
"To conclude, we hold that the Ordinance, as applied to Plaintiffs’ custom wedding invitations, and the creation of those invitations, unconstitutionally compels speech in violation of the Arizona Constitution’s free speech clause," Gould wrote.
A member of the commission that oversees art and architecture on city property suggested Monday that instead of simply adding statues of historical female figures to Central Park, the panel yank out some of the male ones first.
"There are what, five or six [male] statues that I think could easily be replaced by individual statues of each of these women," said Hank Willis Thomas, a painter who serves on the Public Design Commission, at a hearing at City Hall.
Thomas appeared to be specifically fingering statues including that of Scottish poet Robert Burns, in the park’s Literary Row, and the one of Christopher Columbus in the park, near the famed second one of the explorer in Columbus Circle, for removal.
"I don’t think that there are many people who will miss the Burns statue, or some people may not miss the Columbus statue if there’s another one just a few hundred yards away," Thomas said.
But Mayor Bill de Blasio ...cryptocommie mayor of New York and for some reason a Dem candidate for president in 2020. Corrupt and incompetent, his qualifications for office seem to consist of being married to a black woman, with whom he honeymooned in Cuba. He has a preppy-looking son named Dante, whose Divine Comedy involved getting his back hair up when a police car drove past him slowly... ‐ who created monumental hoopla when he opened the door to possibly removing what some groups deemed offensive statues by creating an advisory panel ‐ refused to back the notion.
A rep for Hizzoner told The Post that the mayor ‐ who hand-picked Thomas and the rest of the 10 commissioners on the panel ‐ continues to support adding new monuments instead of removing existing ones.
De Blasio fueled the controversy over potentially removing statues such as those of Columbus by creating an advisory panel to review monuments throughout the five boroughs.
In the end, his panel suggested just one statue be removed ‐ that of 19th century Dr. J. Marion Sims, who experimented on enslaved black women, from Central Park. His advisory panel also said descriptions accompanying other questionable figures be tinkered with to note both sides of their story.
Then there was a movement to increase the presence of female statues, and two names ‐ of women’s rights pioneers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony ‐ were pitched. Central Park currently has 23 statues ‐ all male.
But the proposed double-female statue met resistance for not including a woman of color, so there were calls for abolitionist Sojourner Truth to be added.
Still, the panel said it was troubled over linking the trio in one monument, since while the women all worked on the suffrage movement, they had different approaches, and it began thinking about individual monuments.
#4
"Forget all those pigs on the Maine;
We'll honor the widows of Spain!"
"And Central Park joggers?"
"Millennial bloggers
Of color who live to complain."
#6
You know, I'm always annoyed by the "when they come for our guns, we'll show them". Because, the time "to show them" is now - before they succeed in wiping out your culture. After they do, there's no reason to fight.
Astarboard, we've stuck on some sponsons,
Guns womynned by stunning Ms. Munsons;
To port, Havanese
(who are trans, if you please!),
Also Munsons, aim monstruous johnsons!
Kirkuk (IraqiNews.com) ‐ Two Iraqi coppers were killed Monday in a kaboom in the oil-rich province of Kirkuk, ... a thick stew of Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, and probably Antarcticans, all of them mutually hostile most of the time... a security source said.
Speaking to the privately-owned IKH news website, the source said that an explosive charge targeted a police patrol in al-Rashad district in Kirkuk, leaving two coppers dead.
"The bodies were moved to the forensic medicine department," the source said.
...or they could just send them in batches to Iraq, where they can be tried and hung in batches while the unhelpful nations of the world scream in deliberately impotent fury..
[Rudaw] Captured members of the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really 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 western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group (ISIS ...embracing their inner Islamic Brute... ) should be put before an international tribunal on Syrian soil, the Kurdish-led administration of northern Syria told a visiting British delegation on Monday.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/18/2019
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#1
International Tribune - is that a brand of wood chipper? You know, like International Harvester is a tractor.
#2
"We have just arrived, and I guess these are some of the issues that we will cover in our visits and talks," Russell-Moyle said appearing from a tent zipping up his trousers.
Diyala (IraqiNews.com) ‐ Iraqi security forces destroyed on Tuesday five hotbeds of the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really 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 western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... holy warrior group in the eastern province of Diyala, a police front man said.
"A joint force of Diyala police and army launched a counter-terrorism operation in al-Nada district in the eastern part of the province, destroying five IS hideouts," the Iraqi Ayn Al Iraq news website quoted Diyala police front man Col. Ghaleb al-Attia as saying in a press statement.
The operation was launched based on intelligence information to track down Islamic State gunnies in the province, the front man added.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
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[DAWN] The remains of three minor boys whom police suspect were murdered after being sexually assaulted were found on Tuesday in Punjab's Kasur district, which has garnered international attention for recurring incidents of child sexual abuse in recent years. Ed Buck visit lately?
According to police, two of the children were reported missing in Kasur's Chunian tehsil last month while the third had gone missing two days ago. On the indication of a local worker, police found the body of one of the boys and the skeletal remains of the other two at a deserted place in Chunian Industrial Estate area.
It wasn't immediately clear how the three children were killed but Kasur District Police Officer (DPO) Abdul Ghaffar Qaisrani said police suspected the victims were sexually assaulted before being murdered. More information will become evident once the postmortem examination of the remains is completed, he added.
Residents in Chunian told DawnNewsTV that five children ‐ one of them aged 12 and another eight years old ‐ in the area had gone missing in recent months; the remains of three of them have now been found.
The development comes a day after scores of people staged a protest demonstration in Kasur against what they called the failure of the Chunian police to recover three missing minors and curb the incidence of child abduction. They had dispersed after the local administration assured them of resolving the cases.
Police today collected evidence from the area as an investigation into their deaths went underway.
DPO Qaisrani said three teams had been formed to investigate the cases and a mobile lab of the Punjab 1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots.... Forensic Science Agency had also arrived in the area to collect evidence. He said they were hopeful that the culprit(s) will be arrested within a day or two.
Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar took notice of the children's deaths and sought a briefing from the provincial police chief. Punjab Inspector General of Police Arif Nawaz Khan directed the Kasur DPO to submit a report into the incident.
The deaths are an uneasy reminder of the horrific rape and murder of six-year-old girl Zainab Ansari ‐ a case which sparked widespread outrage and protests across the country after the minor's body was found in a trash heap in Kasur in January 2018.
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has denied reports of Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s on the Iranian forces in the border city of Albukamal.
According to the military, there were no airstrikes or air activity over Albukamal last night, despite claims by pro-militant activists and their media channels.
The source said these claims have been shared by these media outlets and activists to spread disinformation, but they have no truth.
He also denied reports of increased tension between the Syrian military and Iranian-backed forces in the Deir Ezzor Governorate, adding that the situation in the area has been relatively quiet since the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really 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 western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS ...embracing their inner Islamic Brute... /ISIS/IS/ISIS) cells were eliminated in the Badiyah al-Mayadeen region.
Earlier this month, an unknown aircraft carried out airstrikes over a compound belonging to an Iranian-backed Iraqi paramilitary group in Albukamal.
The attack resulted in the partial destruction of the compound and the alleged death of 18 Iraqi fighters; this claim has been denied Hezbollah’s official media wing.
Israel was accused of carrying out the attack, with support from the U.S. military; however, Tel Aviv has not commented on these accusations.
The United States has identified locations in southern Iran where drones and missiles were launched from to attack Saudi Aramco oil facilities, CBS News reports citing a senior US official source.https://t.co/TCx6Oaj0Dp
#6
This would be the same intelligence community who lied to us and swore on a stack of Bibles that Iraq had WMD?
Or more recently swore, I mean totally you can trust us, that they weren't spying on us, in violation of US law. And then Snowden happened and it turned out they were a bunch of dirty liars.
And the same ones who swore up and down that Trump was a Russian spy. Shall I go on?
What do you call a government agency that doesn't make accurate predictions? If the Weather Service had the reputation they did, what would we say?
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
09/18/2019 14:24
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Iran's cruise missiles (the debris IDs these)can fly about 450 mi at the low altitudes they use. That is further than Yeman to Abqaiq.
Apparently Iran sent a wave of drones preceding the Cruise missiles which confused the saudis.
Posted by: lord garth ||
09/18/2019 14:49
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Yes. In fact Yemen is almost twice as far (800 miles by the most direct route) as the 450 mile range of the drones. There is no physical way the attack originated from Yemen.
#10
US Mil-Industrial Complex CIA/NSA/DOD, obviously
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/18/2019 19:43
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The Houtis have some drones that could perhaps make it to Abquib but not carrying much more than a couple of 5 kg bombs. They would likely have been picked up by the various radar networks that the Saudis have in the south and the Saudis have been successful in knocking previously launched drones when they picked them up on radar.
Posted by: lord garth ||
09/18/2019 19:58
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Iranian proxies owned by neocons in the CIA for an inside job red flag attack meant to justify an Saudi attack on Iran via the US military.
[Rest of this post self deleted after conferring a Kabbalah inspired comparison between The Jay Treaty an Rantburg's Return Policy]
#13
When Lurch was in the ME a couple of months ago he asked Iran into dragging us into yet another Middle East (aka endless) war just ahead of the 2020 elections. That way they could both be rid of Trump and life would get easy for them again.
[DAWN] The postmortem forensic report on the death of alleged ATM thief Salahuddin Ayubi has confirmed the presence of torture marks on his body prior to his death, health department officials, as well as the District Standing Medical Board (DSMB) in Rahim Yar Khan have concluded.
Medical Superintendent Dr Ghulam Rabbani told Dawn on Tuesday that the report was prepared by the Punjab 1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots.... Forensic Science Agency (PFSA) and was submitted to City A division police on Monday.
A member of the medical team that conducted Ayubi's autopsy, wishing to remain anonymous, stated that various samples of skin taken "show violence on the body".
"The dear departed was also affected by lung disease and hepatitis," he added.
According to the forensic report, a copy of which is available with Dawn, the various samples submitted to PFSA indicate that the injuries were antemortem (before death) in nature.
"The submitted pieces of skin from right deltoid (shoulder) area, left deltoid area and left hand reveals presence of blood haemorrhages, and scattered inflammatory cells suggesting antemortem nature of injuries with associated inflammation," read the report.
The report has similar remarks about the sample taken from the left elbow joint.
An official from the health department, requesting anonymity told Dawn that the histopathology of injuries shows that the dear departed was "subjected to violence before his death".
"Blood clots were found on the injured body parts. There were signs of torture on the upper side of the right arm and the left side of the belly," the official said.
"The man was physically tortured before his death," he confirmed.
The DSMB in its final and "unanimous opinion" given in the post-mortem report has stated: "Keeping in view the autopsy report, forensic toxicology and forensic histopathology reports [...] the injuries are antemortem in nature and caused by blunt means confirming antemortem physical violence".
[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] Porn star Stormy Daniels recently announced that she would enter the 2020 presidential race if her former attorney Michael Avenatti announced a campaign.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, discussed her unlikely but possible presidential campaign in an interview with The Daily Beast that was published Sunday.
“If he decides to run, I’m going to run just so I can start a GoFundMe for the sheer purpose of making smear campaign videos against him,” Clifford said, laughing. “Just for fun. I bet people would actually be into it.”
Avenatti had been representing Clifford in a lawsuit purposed to void a hush-money agreement she made for an alleged affair she had with President Trump in 2006.
Clifford opted to retain new representation in March.
“This was not a decision we made lightly and it came only after lengthy discussion, thought and deliberation, as well as consultation with other professionals,” Avenatti said in a statement at the time. “We wish Stormy all the best.”
Avenatti has been arrested on multiple occasions with claims of domestic violence and embezzlement in an attempt to extort Nike.
[DAWN] Oil prices slid on Tuesday, although the market remains on tenterhooks over the threat of a military response to attacks on 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... n crude oil facilities that halved the kingdom's output and prompted a price spike not seen in decades.
Saturday's attacks raised the prospect of a major supply shock in a market that in recent months has focused on demand concerns due to the pressure on global growth from an ongoing United States-China trade dispute. Saudi Arabia is the world's top oil exporter and has been the supplier of last resort for decades.
Brent crude was down 36 cents, or 0.5 per cent, at $68.66 a barrel at 9:30 GMT, and West Texas Intermediate was down 57 cents, or 0.9pc, at $62.33 a barrel. Earlier, the crude benchmarks both fell by around 2pc.
On Monday, the prices surged nearly 20pc in intraday trading in response to the attacks, the biggest jump in almost 30 years, before closing nearly 15pc higher at four-month highs.
Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman will hold a news conference at 8pm local time. State-owned producer Saudi Aramco has not given a specific timeline for the resumption of full output.
"All eyes will be on the Saudi news conference," said Samuel Ciszuk, founding partner at Stockholm-based ELS Analysis.
"We need a proper damage assessment, we need to see a recovery plan. Before that, we don't really know how much oil will be offline for how long and that's the basic question people having been posing since Saturday."
[ALMASDARNEWS] Several Syrian Arab Army (SAA) soldiers were killed Tuesday by the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really 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 western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS ...embracing their inner Islamic Brute... /ISIS/IS/ISIS) terrorist group near the Hamimah region of the Homs Governorate, a source told al-Masdar News.
According to the military source, the Syrian Arab Army troops near the Hamimah region were ambushed by a group of Islamic State turbans as they were posted up in this desert area.
As a result of the Islamic State ambush, the Syrian Arab Army and their allies from the National Defense Forces (SDF) suffered over ten casualties in the Badiya al-Sham region southeast of Palmyra city.
Tuesday’s attack by the Islamic State marked the first time since the Syrian Arab Army carried out their Deir Ezzor desert operation that the terrorist group has carried out an assault of this size.
The Islamic State sleeper cells have have been operating in the desert region near Palmyra for several years now, but since they lost most of their territories inside Syria, they have been limited to this area because of the plethora of caves.
ISIS uses these caves to hide out from Syrian Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s and to store military equipment and supplies so they can carry out these types of attacks.
[DAWN] India's foreign minister said on Tuesday that Azad Jammu and Kashmir ...a disputed territory lying between India and Pakistain. After partition, the Paks grabbed half of it and call it Azad (Free) Kashmir. The remainder they refer to as "Indian Occupied Kashmir". They have fought four wars with India over it, the score currently 4-0 in New Delhi's favor. After 72 years of this nonsense, India cut the Gordian knot in 2019, removing the area's special status, breaking off Ladakh as a separate state, and allowing people from other areas to settle (or in the case of the Pandits, to resettle) there.... belongs to India and that he expected New Delhi to gain physical control over it one day, raising the rhetoric over the territorial dispute.
In response, Pakistain strongly condemned and rejected "the inflammatory and irresponsible remarks made by the Indian External Affairs Minister regarding Pakistain and AJK", according to a statement by the Foreign Office.
The statement also called upon the international community to take note of the "aggressive posturing".
India claims the heavily populated Kashmir Valley while Pakistain has a wedge of territory in the west of the disputed region ‐ Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
"Our position on [Azad Kashmir] is, has always been and will always be very clear. [Azad Kashmir] is part of India and we expect one day that we will have the jurisdiction, physical jurisdiction over it," Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told a news conference.
Last month, New Delhi abrogated the special status of India-Indian Kashmire in a bid to integrate the territory fully into India, a move that has prompted protests and anger in Kashmir and Pakistain.
Asked about the Indian foreign minister's comments, Dr Mohammad Faisal, front man for Pakistain's foreign ministry, said his government's position on Kashmir had not changed.
Pakistain maintains that Kashmir is a disputed territory that should be resolved by the United Nations ...where theory meets practice and practice loses... Pakistain has condemned India's decision to change Kashmir's status and said India's crackdown on protests and dissent there would drive more of the world's Moslems into extremism.
But Jaishankar said revoking Kashmir's special rights was an internal Indian matter.
[APNEWS] The leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reaffirmed Tuesday the religion’s opposition to gay marriage, saying God’s law dictates that marriage is restricted to unions between a man and a woman.
Church president Russell M. Nelson also said during a speech to students at the church-owned Brigham Young University that the religion’s love for everyone regardless of sexual orientation led to the repeal earlier this year of a 2015 policy that banned baptisms for children of parents in same-sex relationships and labeled gay couples as sinners eligible for expulsion.
Nelson said love also motivated the original policy as he and other leaders attempted to prevent friction between the beliefs of gay parents and their children. Nelson became president last year but was a member of a top governing body called the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles when the policy took effect.
"We knew that this policy created concern and confusion for some and heartache for others," said Nelson, who is considered a prophet by church members. "That grieved us. Whenever the sons and daughters of God weep, for whatever reasons, we weep."
Nelson contended that leaders can’t change God’s laws but have the authority to adjust church policy.
The remarks were the latest in an ongoing attempt by the Utah-based faith widely known as the Mormon church to carve out a compassionate stance toward LGBTQ people while adhering to opposition of gay marriage.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2019
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Starting Aug. 29, Alabama will no longer issue traditional marriage licenses. Instead, couples wanting to get wed will submit a notarized marriage certificate that will be recorded – but not issued – by Probate Judges. The notarized statement must be submitted within a month of being signed.
“The new law eliminates the need for a license to be obtained in advance and a ceremony is no longer required, although couple may certainly have a ceremony if they wish,” Madison County Probate Judge Frank Barger said.
In other words, a contract between two people, for which the state validates but does not endorse. Gee, what a concept. However, its the beginning of unraveling the can of worms that has been allowed to accumulate which favors one party over another in any dissolution of such a relationship. The logical conclusion has to be that both are equal in entering the contract and both have equal standing in it termination.
[DAWN] The grand opening of Sri Lanka’s tallest tower was mired in controversy on Monday when President Maithripala Sirisena said one of the Chinese firms contracted to work on the project had disappeared with $11 million of state funds.
Sirisena made the allegation at the launch ceremony of the China-financed Lotus Tower, a 356.3-metre (1,169 ft) construction in the shape of a lotus bud featuring a revolving restaurant, conference hall and observation area.
The Chinese embassy in Colombo did not respond to requests for comment.
The tower, overlooking Beira Lake in central Colombo, is expected to become a major tourism attraction.
Sirisena said that in 2012, under his predecessor former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, the state-run Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (TRC) had deposited 2 billion rupees ($11.09 million) with Aerospace Long-March International Trade Co. Ltd (ALIT), a Chinese firm chosen as one of the main contractors.
"In 2016, we found ALIT had disappeared. We investigated into this and the Sri Lankan ambassador in Beijing went to the address of ALIT personally on my instruction to find there was no such company," Sirisena said in a speech.
"This is the money we could have spent for development of this country, for education, and medicines of patients." Sirisena’s audience at the opening ceremony included Chinese envoy to Colombo Cheng Xueyuan. It was not possible to approach the Cheng at the ceremony for comment and officials at China’s embassy in the Sri Lankan capital did not respond to text and WhatsApp messages.
It was not immediately possible to contact ALIT via phone or email.
Sirisena had suspended most of the Chinese-backed infrastructure projects started under Rajapaksa when he came to power in 2015 over allegations of corruption, overpricing and flouting government procedures.
But more than a year later, the Sirisena government allowed Chinese projects to resume after a few changes in some of them.
China’s Exim Bank in 2012 agreed to lend 80 percent of the total investment of $104.3 million in the Lotus Tower, with the rest to be met by TRC.
TRC in a statement said Chinese firms China National Electronics Import & Export Corporation (CEIEC) and Aerospace Long-March International Trade Co. Ltd (ALIT) were chosen as the main contractors.
Sirisena said the government had started repayment of the loans made, but more funds were needed to complete the project.
Chinese investment has become controversial in Sri Lanka, which is struggling with expensive external debt and where growth is expected to slump to its worst level since a contraction in 2001. Tourism, the country’s third largest foreign currency earner and fastest growing sector, was also hit hard by Islamist Lions of Islam attack in April.
Sirisena’s Lotus Tower allegation also comes ahead of a presidential election later this year.
Political sources close to Sirisena and Rajapaksa have said talks between the president’s centre-left Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) for a coalition deal have broken down.
[DAWN] A blast killed 24 people and injured 31 others near an election rally held by Afghanistan's Caped PresidentAshraf Ghani ...former chancellor of Kabul University, now president of Afghanistan. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money... in central Parwan province on Tuesday, a health official said.
"Women and children are among them and most of the victims seems to be the civilians. Ambulances are still operating, and the number of casualties may rise," said Dr Abdul Qasim Sangin, head of the provincial hospital.
Dr Sangin at the Charakar hospital in northern Parwan province said another 31 people were maimed in the attack.
The president’s campaign front man Hamed Aziz said that Ghani was there but that he was safe and unharmed. Aziz said he would provide more details later.
Wahida Shahkar, spokeswoman for the provincial governor in Parwan, said the earth-shattering kaboom happened while the rally was underway on Tuesday, at the entrance to the venue.
No one grabbed credit for the attack, which comes as the country heads into presidential elections later this month despite relentless violence plaguing Afghanistan.
The Taliban ...Arabic for students... have warned Afghans not to vote and said they would target polling stations and election campaigns.
26 people have been killed and 42 wounded on Tuesday by a suicide bomber at President Ghani’s campaign rally in the central province of Parwan, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior confirmed.
The attack took place at 11:40 a.m. in the city of Charikar after a suicide bomber on a motorbike detonated his explosives where dozens of people were entering the meeting place, local officials said.
“The bodies of the deceased have been transferred to hospitals,” said Qasim Sangin, head of Parwan’s provincial hospital.
“A number of the wounded people are not in a stable condition,” Sangin said, adding that the identities of many remained unknown. “We are busy with treatment.”
In the meantime, local police reported that only eight people were killed in the attack and 10 were wounded.
Reporters covering the campaign rally said the attack happened just after Ghani begin his speech, and that the president continued speaking despite the blast. Hundreds of supporters were in attendance.
The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack, claiming they were targeting security forces at the campaign rally.
The local officials had earlier confirmed that an improvised explosive device planted in a security vehicle went off close to the entrance gate of the compound where the rally is organized.
Wahida Shakar, a spokesperson for provincial government had earlier said a magnetic bomb went off close to the election rally compound.
[Libya Observer] Khalifa Haftar ...Self-proclaimed Field Marshal, served in the Libyan army under Muammar Qadaffy, and took part in the coup that brought Qadaffy to power in 1969. He became a prisoner of war in Chad in 1987. While held prisoner, he and his fellow officers formed a group hoping to overthrow Qadaffy, so it's kind of hard to describe him as a Qadaffy holdover. He was released around 1990 in a deal with the United States government and spent nearly two decades in the United States, gaining US citizenship. In 1993, while living in the United States, he was convicted in absentia of crimes against the Jamahiriya and sentenced to death. Haftar held a senior position in the anti-Qadaffy forces in the 2011 Libyan Civil War. In 2014 he was commander of the Libyan Army when the General National Congress (GNC) refused to give up power in accordance with its term of office. Haftar launched a campaign against the GNC and its Islamic fundamentalist allies. His campaign allowed elections to take place to replace the GNC, but then developed into a civil war. Guess you can't win them all... 's warplanes continue to strike residential areas in south and east 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... without targeting military locations as foreign drones backing up Haftar's forces strike Mitiga Airport for the fourth day in a row.
Sources from Volcano of Rage Operation said Mig 21 for Haftar's forces hit a storage for Jarma Company in Tajoura but caused only material damage, while another strike hit a residential area in al-Karaymiya, injuring a family.
The Libya Observer has not verified any information about the number and type of casualties due to the Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s.
The sources added that another airstrike hit April 7 Camp in al-Sawani in southern Tripoli but caused no damages.
Volcano of Rage Operation confirmed on Tuesday that Haftar's UAE-supplied drones targeted Mitiga Airport in Tripoli for the fourth consecutive day, saying it is a desperate attempt by Haftar's forces to make up for their losses on frontlines.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Protesters massed in the Algerian capital on Tuesday to demand the cancellation of a controversial presidential election planned for December 12.
Interim leader Abdelkader Bensalah announced the poll on Monday in a bid to resolve the political deadlock gripping the country since the April resignation of longtime president Abdelaziz Bouteflika ...10th president-for-life of Algeria. He was elected in 1999 and served on his third or four terms. When he announced for the fifth, or maybe it was the sixth, visibly doddering, a grateful nation rose up in its wrath and threw him out... But activists have demanded political reforms and the removal of Bouteflika loyalists including powerful army chief Ahmed Gaid Salah before any vote takes place.
Led by students, protesters on Tuesday shouted slogans against "the gang" and demanded: "Hey Gaid Salah, forget the elections!"
The general, who has become a key powerbroker since Bouteflika’s departure, has led the push for polls by the end of the year in keeping with the constitution.
But Hamid, a 57-year-old public servant who took part in Tuesday’s protest, insisted that would not happen.
"We will cancel the December 12 vote just like we cancelled the July 4 election," he said.
After Bouteflika resigned in the face of mass protests in April, presidential elections were called for July 4.
However the vote was postponed due to a lack of viable candidates, leaving a political vacuum in the North African country.
"If Gaid Salah wants to go against the will of the people, we will demonstrate on election day to show that the people don’t support the vote," Hamid said.
Protesters have held mass rallies every Tuesday and Friday since 11 February, calling for key regime figures to step down.
"Students represent the majority of voters and we will not participate" in the election, said Samia, a law student at Tuesday’s demonstration.
"We will stay mobilised until our demands are met: the removal of all representatives of Bouteflika’s regime before any election," she added.
Police detained at least 10 protesters in central Algiers and confiscated mobile phones of people who filmed the arrests, according to an AFP journalist.
Samia said: "How do they expect us to participate in a democratic election when they keep arresting protesters and activists?"
More on this story from yesterday, which dwelt on how Ennahda (the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia) is become kingmaker in post-Arab Spring Tunisian politics.
[DAWN] Two candidates who claim they will win through to Tunisia’s presidential run-off ‐ a conservative law expert and an imprisoned media mogul ‐ could hardly be more different, but both bill themselves as political outsiders.
Nabil Karoui, behind bars since August 23 on charges of money laundering, is a populist showman whose political colours changed with the times, culminating in the launch of his Qalb Tounes (Heart of Tunisia) party just months ago.
Maverick Kais Saied, meanwhile, is an academic committed to social conservatism who has ploughed his own furrow.
Nicknamed "Robocop" due to his abrupt, staccato speech and rigid posture, the impeccably dressed Saied shunned political parties, avoided mass rallies and campaigned door-to-door.
Hours after polling booths closed in the country’s second free presidential polls since the 2011 Arab Spring, he declared he was in pole position.
"I am first in the first round and if I am elected president I will apply my programme," he said in a spartan apartment in central Tunis.
On the campaign trail, he advocated a rigorous overhaul of the constitution and voting system, to decentralise power "so that the will of the people penetrates into central government and puts an end to corruption".
With a quarter votes counted Monday, Tunisia’s electoral commission (ISIE) put Saied in the lead with 19 percent of the vote.
Often surrounded by young acolytes, he has pushed social conservatism, defending the death penalty , criminalisation of homosexuality and a sexual assault law that punishes unmarried couples who engage in public displays of affection.
While Saied came from the sidelines with his unique approach to courting Tunisia’s voters ‐ and did so with barely any money behind him ‐ media magnate Nabil Karoui’s story is more flamboyant.
[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] Rep. Tulsi Gabbard compared President Trump to a pimp while criticizing one of his tweets that indicated he would follow Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... 's lead in responding to an attack on one of the kingdom's major oil facilities.
"I've never engaged in hateful rhetoric against you or your family, and I never will, but your offering our military assets to the dictator of Saudi Arabia to use as he sees fit is a betrayal of my brother and sisters in uniform who are ready to give our lives for our country, not for the Islamist dictator of Saudi Arabia," the Hawaii Democrat said in a video posted to Twitter on Monday. "For you to think that you can pimp out our proud service men and women to the prince of Saudi Arabia is disgraceful, and it once again shows that you are unfit to serve as our commander in chief."
Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran who still serves in the Hawaii Army National Guard, continued: "My fellow service members and I, we are not your hookers. You are not our pimp."
Gabbard's video was a response to a Trump tweet from Sunday, in which the president wrote, "There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!"
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2019
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Well, she's not wrong. It's insane that the US puts its military at the service of other countries like this. What are we, an international mercenary company?
No, we're not. Mercenaries get paid. We spend our own money on these pointless interventions, and nothing ever gets better.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
09/18/2019 1:51
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#2
We spend our own money on these pointless interventions, and nothing ever gets better.
I wish military interventions could be like education or public safety appropriations, where we spend the money once and never have to do it again.
#4
The problem lies in judging Iranian reaction to expected US response to the latest Iranian aggression, this time against Saudi Arabia.
Iranian response against the US or Israeli targets could lead quickly to serious war, but would probably end the Iranian regime rather quickly. A more plausible response by Iran would be against Saudi Arabia itself.
It is for that reason that consultation with Saudi Arabia is necessary. The government of same must be willing and prepared to defend itself against further Iranian aggression or means must be employed to protect it against the next Iranian response.
Incidentally, further Iranian aggression against Saudi Arabia is even more probable if there is no US response to the latest Iranian attack, than if there is one.
For the US to respond while ignoring potential Saudi vulnerabilities would be irresponsible.
Posted by: Daniel ||
09/18/2019 4:02
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#5
For the US and Israel to sit back and focus on their own problems while the islamics fight amongst themselves to be oil suppliers with no markets would be even better.
#7
just Trump keeping up appearances that the sheet-wearers in SA are our allies and that what happens to them is important to us.
'Oh no, don't throw us in that briar patch, Br'er Mullah!'
Posted by: Bob Grorong1136 ||
09/18/2019 7:37
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#8
Sorry Herb and Tulsi, American military is never under foreign control. It's the law, period. The chain of command goes directly to the President. We coordinate, cooperate, and support but we never surrender the ultimate allegiance to the Constitution.
Your problem is that we are riding a tiger and can't get off. The American Constitution was never designed to have a large standing army engaged in entangling alliances across the world. It has corrupted the underlying checks and balances relationships internal to the federal government. If you took the time to notice, the current occupant is trying to actually disengage us and avoid bellicose knee jerk military actions, which is probably why a couple of old guard cabinet people have left.
#11
I wish military interventions could be like education or public safety appropriations, where we spend the money once and never have to do it again.
#12
I've lost track...was this an inside job by state department neocons to work war profits or a legitimate Iranian strike where the US is the bought and paid for military pawns of the Saud?
Oh I have one...this is a combined effort by valjar democrats and Iran to influence the Israeli elections to insert a peace above all government.
#13
Ah, the guilt by association logical fallacy. It never gets old.
Hitler was in favor of banning smoking. You're also in favor of banning smoking. If your comments were Nazi agit-prop, how would they be different?
Gosh, the entire idea of going to war with a nation that is no threat to us is SO un-American. What would George Washington say about intervening against the Persians on behalf of desert nomads?
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
09/18/2019 15:19
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#15
A Saudi military strong enough to take on Iran is strong enough to unify the Middle East. They've tried it before - until the Brits knocked them back on their heels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikhwan_revolt
Far better if everyone in the region is defanged, including Iran.
#16
Herb, our policy aim is clear, simple and 100% consistent with the tried and true "offshore balancing" approach that Britain used successfully for hundreds of years vis-a-vis Europe: prevent any single power from dominating the Middle East.
Iran seeks to dominate the Middle East. They must be prevented from doing so by an offshore balancing strategy combining economic pressure with punitive strikes and opportunistic anti-Iranian coalitions.
None of the above requires us to invade Iran. But we absolutely should apply as much pressure, wherever whenever and however we can, as an offshore balancer.
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/18/2019 20:09
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a nation that is no threat to us
What a fascinating assessment.
Oddly enough, that might have been true if Eisenhower the dodderer hadn't dismantled the European empires, leaving the US as the only UN "policeman" to keep the peace. But Humpty Dumpty can't be re-assembled, and the only thing holding back general war (as countries resume fighting each other for fame and glory) and soaring commodities prices is Uncle Sam. The minute we step back, I fully expect history to resume in the Middle East, with a new Ummayad or Abbasid empire taking the place of the existing gaggle of states. What stinks about it is the fact this empire will comprise 40% of the world's oil production. That's why we stay involved. Because $200 oil* will take the country into steep recession. The Saudis were nuts to let oil get to $100. That was the trigger for the Great Recession. They now know the global economy's pain threshold and are racing to get oil production back online before we go through another painful recession.
* We use 20m barrels of oil a day. Every dollar price increase costs the economy $7.3b per year. A $10 price increase represents a $73b hit.
#21
Every day we become more and more "energy independent" Turn a few more screws and your argument becomes mute. Unless you consider we can charge more for our exports, then it's a benefit to let them war.
#22
Every day we become more and more "energy independent"
As long as we use oil, we're not energy independent. We don't use it because we like it. We use it because it's cheap. There's a single price for oil. We produce 12m per day, use 20m. Producers sell to the highest bidder. $100 oil means we pay $100. Oil producers make out like bandits. As consumers, we're screwed, unless we make like the Saudis, nationalize oil production and give everyone a stipend from the proceeds.
#23
So bottom line is that as long as we use oil, we're not energy independent. There is a single market for oil, and we pay whatever price producers demand. Anyway - oil consumption and production numbers at the link.
[ALMASDARNEWS] Ottoman Turkish President His Enormity, 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. In Anatolia did Recep Bey a stately Presidential Palace decree, that has 1100 rooms. That's 968 more than in the White House, 400 more than in Versailles, and 325 more than Buckingham Palace, so you know who's really more important... announced after the first meeting at the Ankara peace talks that his country will not allow bully boyz to appear in the area created on the border with Syria; instead, he has proposed to turn it into a refugee city.
"For the refugees there (on the Syrian border), it is necessary to create a city for them to participate in agriculture. I explained to my colleagues that it is necessary to build infrastructure for them. It is necessary to prevent the formation of a terrorist corridor," the Ottoman Turkish president said after talks with 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 Iranian President Hassan Rouhani ...Iran's moderate president, which he is, relative to his predecessor, which doesn't mean he's anything but a puppet of the nearest holy man... in Ankara on Monday.
The Ottoman Turkish capital Ankara on Monday hosted the tripartite summit of the guarantors of the Astana process (Russia, The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...Qatar's satrapy in Asia Minor... and Iran) on the Syrian settlement.
During the meeting on Monday, the three presidents agreed to establish a constitutional committee to resolve future political disputes.
Furthermore, the three presidents discussed the future of the Idlib Governorate, but no official agreement was made to resolve their differences.
[Rudaw] Kurdish forces in northeast Syria said Monday that Syrian refugees hosted by neighboring The Sick Man of Europe Turkey who are not indigenous to the region should not be resettled in the area, contrary to Ottoman Turkish plans.
Turkey and the US recently reached an agreement to establish a ’safe zone’ along northern Syria’s shared border with Turkey.
Although the precise length and depth of this safe zone is still under discussion, Turkey says it intends to resettle some of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees it currently hosts inside a so-called ’peace corridor’ in the Kurdish-controlled north.
Following a meeting with US-led coalition officials in Tel Abyad on Monday, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) set out its own vision for refugee resettlement, insisting only Syrians indigenous to SDF areas, and those not affiliated with "terrorist groups", would be permitted.
In a Twitter thread following the meeting, the Coordination and Military Ops Center said: "Refugees may return when preparations are complete that include the support of international organizations and international aid," specifically once a screening system has been established.
"The refugees must originally come from NE Syria ... [and] the refugees must not be connected to any terror activities or crimes against Syrian people," the SDF added.
Any return must also be voluntary, the SDF said, urging the international community to step in to provide support and care for refugees and to prevent the return of the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really 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 western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS ...embracing their inner Islamic Brute... ), territorially defeated in northeast Syrian in March.
The SDF’s vision of refugee resettlement differs sharply with plans outlined by Turkey in recent weeks
Ottoman Turkish President His Enormity, Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First said Monday that up to three million Syrians hosted by Turkey would soon be moved to northeast Syria.
Turkey, which considers the region’s ruling Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the People’s Protection Units (YPG) as extensions of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has more than once threatened to invade the Kurdish controlled areas.
The safe zone is supposed to prevent this from happened in return for meeting some of Turkey’s security concerns.
US and Ottoman Turkish forces have already started joint aerial and land patrols along the proposed zone. Ottoman Turkish forces usually return to their side of the border following these patrols.
Turkey hosts more Syrian refugees than any other country in the region, placing a strain on its public infrastructure and inter-communal relations. In response to this growing hostility, Ankara has promised to resettle them.
Speaking at a trilateral presser with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani ...Iran's moderate president, which he is, relative to his predecessor, which doesn't mean he's anything but a puppet of the nearest holy man... on Monday, Erdogan said his country will focus on the "voluntary return" of Syrians.
"It is evident that Turkey cannot shoulder the refugee burden on its own. Nor is it possible for our country to face a new migration wave. Now it is time for us to focus on the safe and voluntary return of Syrians to their own country," he said.
Two million Syrians currently taking refuge in Turkey can be resettled in this area and this figure might exceed even three million if this line can be extended all the way to Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa, Erdogan added.
Speaking to North Press Agency, a media agency close to the SDF, US Special Presidential Envoy for Syria Engagement James Jeffrey said the safe zone is being established to prevent an ISIS resurgence, but did not clarify whether the return of refugees is on the agenda.
The US wants to establish a "security mechanism" that would ensure the permanent destruction of ISIS, he said.
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Syrian military has found a cave near the recently liberated city of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province that was used by gunnies as a large military base, Big. Gen. Abdel Kerim Meikhun told news hounds.
"Our fighters discovered this cave after the liberation of the south of Idlib province, which took place in late August. Apart from being a powerful fortified area, it also stored scores of various weapons and combat outfit of turbans: here are a helmet, uniform and gas mask; and here is a heavy machine gun belt and rocket-propelled grenade munitions," Meikhun said.
According to him, the cave is about 10,000 square meters (107,639 square feet) and has an extensive system of tunnels. The facility also had a command post with a map of the city of Khan Sheihoun and the village of Morek, a field hospital and sleeping rooms.
Meikhun noted that each of the tunnels was at least 200 meters long. Before leaving, gunnies hastily mined the facility, with sapper work still underway.
In addition, this cave could have been used by the White Helmets, an NGO suspected of being linked to jihadist rebel groups, for shooting videos of staged chemical attacks to frame the Syrian government forces.
In August, the Syrian government conducted a military operation during which it seized parts of Hama and Idlib provinces that had been controlled by gunnies since 2014, including the strategic city of Khan Sheikhoun and access to the M5 highway linking Damascus and Aleppo.
On April 4, 2017, the Syrian opposition claimed that over 80 people had been killed in a chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, blaming the Syrian government for it. Even though Damascus strongly denied No, no! Certainly not! the accusations and no convincing evidence to the contrary were provided, the United States struck Shayrat airbase controlled by the Syrian government three days later.
[DAWN] The United Kingdom has agreed to hand over evidence to Pakistan in connection with the Imran Farooq murder case, it emerged on Tuesday.
Toby Cadman, the lawyer for the Pakistan government, told Dawn that he had submitted the documents related to the case in the Islamabad High Court (IHC). The documents include the index of evidence as well as a letter from the UK government agreeing to share the originals.
Additionally, he confirmed that Pakistan had made a request for mutual legal assistance (MLA) to transfer evidence relevant to the inquiry regarding the Muttahida Qaumi Movement leader's murder.
Cadman said he is currently in Pakistan to deliver the letter of acceptance, the evidence list and to attend a hearing of the case.
Meanwhile, a two-member high court bench comprising IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah and Justice Mian Gul Hasan Aurangzeb, overturned a trial court's verdict and allowed the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to take more time to collect evidence. The court said that the trial should be completed within two months after the submission of evidence.
The letter of acceptance was also submitted in the court during today's hearing.
Dr Farooq, a senior leader of the MQM, was murdered outside his home in London in 2010.
In June, the FIA special prosecutor Khawaja Imtiaz had informed an anti-terrorism court (ATC) that the UK was ready to share evidence in the murder case provided the accused was not given the death penalty in the case of conviction.
Imtiaz had told the ATC that the UK Central Authority, in response to correspondence related to sharing of evidence in the murder case, said that European laws did not permit sharing of evidence with a country where the offence was punishable by death.
One is forced to conclude that the damage was not nearly as great as originally claimed — could it be that the mighty Iranian proxies are not nearly as effective as believed?
[TWITTER]
"The damage has been contained and [Saudi Aramco] restored more than half of the output, which was cut as a result of this terrorist attack," says Saudi Arabia's Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman.
Related: The Jerusalem Post shares an American satellite image showing the initial damage to oil/gas Saudi Aramco infrastructure at Khurais, in Saudi Arabia.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2019
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#1
I wonder if Iranians will hit them again once 80% (or so) is restored?
#2
The Saudis should already possess enough weaponry to hit some of Iran's choice targets.
I think the problem is that the Saudis don't seem to have the defensive capabilities that they should. They protected themselves from dozens of strikes from Yemen but were caught by whatever hit them last Saturday. The Saudis will also want to get Russian and China to back them in the Security Counsel before they hit Iran but that will be dicey as Russia will want to be bribed and who knows what mood Xi will be in on this issue.
Posted by: lord garth ||
09/18/2019 8:12
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[ALMASDARNEWS] Leader of the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really 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 western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... of Iraq and Syria (ISIS ...embracing their inner Islamic Brute... -ISIS-IS) has released a new audio message as the group suffers devastating defeats in Syria and Iraq.
In the 30-minute audio recording released by the group’s media wing, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi urges his fighters to spare no efforts to free ISIS detainees and women held in prisons and detention camps.
"How a Moslem can enjoy life when Moslem women are held in "prisons of humiliation run by Crusaders and their Shia followers".
Tens of thousands of fighters and other members of the group are held in detention centers across northern Syria and in Iraq.
In Hasakah province, located in northwest Syria, al-Hawl camp is home to nearly 73,000 people, mostly families of ISIS jihadists.
Al-Baghdadi also boasted his group’s ability to carry on attacks in various countries worldwide in spite of the military campaign being waged against them by world powers.
"Coordinated attacks (conducted by ISIS across the region) are unprecedented in modern jihadist history. In four days, [ISIS] attacked in eight countries and on 92 targets, all specified in timing & targets. Not long after, [ISIS] attacked in 11 countries, in 61 operations in three days; then last year, within 10 days, in 10 wilayat, 152 operations", he said.
Among the countries in which ISIS is actively operating are Afghanistan, Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of... , Somalia, Central and Western Africa, East Asia and North Africa (Tunisia and Libya).
The audio speech was cherished by ISIS followers who posted leaflets expressing support and pledging allegiance to Baghdadi as the Caliphate of Moslem nation.
The Iraqi Kurdish news site Rudaw has a very different take on the same speech than does Iranian sock puppet Al Masdar News, above:
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Leader of the Islamic State (ISIS) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced changes to the group’s recruitment methods in a new speech, taking on a more concessional tone in what appears to be an effort to expand the pool from which fighters for the group are recruited.
In an undated, 30-minute long audio recording published on ISIS Telegram channels on Monday, titled “Tell them: Work,” ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi vows that his group will persevere.
"No matter how long it is, how complicated things get, and no matter reasons, there is no excuse for failing or passivity, or for confusion or doubts,” al-Baghdadi said.
ISIS was declared defeated at the end of 2017 in Iraq and in March 2019 in Syria. The group has, however, remained active, reverting to hit and run tactics and sheltering in remote locations across the two countries.
He claimed the militant group is also active elsewhere in the Middle East, in North Africa and in Southeast Asia, contending with its enemies in a "confident and solid" manner.
"[ISIS] is moving forward in its path, confident in the victory of God."
Detailing the nature of recent ISIS operations, Baghdadi spoke of “raids” that he says are “the first” in the history of jihadism.
In a four-day operation titled Avenge the People of Levant," he claimed ISIS has conducted 92 operations in 80 different locations. He did not specify the operation’s start date. He also claimed 61 “attrition raid” operations took place in 11 eleven countries over the course of three days.
Despite the defiance and assertion of continued fighting, the leader of the terrorist group spoke on a series of “topics” or questions that signify a significant shift in the group’s way of conduct.
The ISIS leader conceded that the group is lacking in size, saying "we fight with our enemies and defeat them by their own sins. Otherwise, we don't have the power to match them because our number does not much theirs, nor are we as powerful as them."
The Monday-released speech differs sharply from the triumphant tone he stroke in his last visual appearance on April 29, 2019, in which he was seen praising jihadi rank strength and cohesion.
The concessions appear to be aimed at attracting attract a new pool of recruits and make peace with the Sunni Arab community, whose territories the group controlled.
One of the topics was to call on the "people of Sunnah," to join the ranks and to "go easy" on people’s religious shortcomings, a tone of forgiveness unseen in the group’s brutal handing of people suspected of committing religious transgressions.
"The first of these topics is inviting the people [to ISIS], especially the ordinary people of Sunnah, and being kind to them as it cannot be hidden from you the abject ignorance that has stormed the Ummah … producing a dimension removed from the original religion, and a spread of idolatry, innovation and myths, and all that was not sent by Allah."
It is unclear if Baghdadi is also referring to Shiite Muslims, as the mention of Sunnah may exclusively refer to Sunni Arabs.
A second change in position is to "accept the repentance" of those who have sinned, said al-Baghdadi, in a shift from the usual ISIS ideology that did not accept repentance from prisoners or anyone suspected of working against the group.
Al-Baghdadi also spoke on "dealing with all the worshippers of Allah with science and truth, benevolence and fairness."
An Iraqi terrorism expert remarked on the group’s shift in position after the video's release.
“Fugitive al-Baghdadi, in an audio recording published by al-Furqat Foundation with the title ‘Tell them: work’, announced the start of a new phase following the announcement of defeat, a phase with four tasks; reconciling with the environment they were defeated in, recruiting following ascertaining the repentance of the recruited, continuation of united raids, and operations to break into prisons,” Husham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi terrorism expert, said in a tweet on Monday.
In continued efforts to purge the group from its territory, Iraq yesterday announced the fifth phase of Operation of Will of Victory, to centre this time on Anbar and the Iraq-Saudi border.
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and their allies have sent reinforcements to the Deir Ezzor Governorate this week following threats from the Iran-backed al-Baqir Brigade to attack the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the eastern region of the Euphrates River region.
According to a military report from eastern Syria, the Syrian Arab Army and the Paleostinian-led al-Quds Brigade
...Liwaa Al Quds is a pro-Syrian government Palestinian paramilitary faction made up of those who fled the Handarat refugee camp in northern Aleppo when jihadis took over...
sent reinforcements to the front-lines in Deir Ezzor, where they positioned themselves just west of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
A source nearby said the Syrian Army has no plans to attack the Syrian Democratic Forces; however, they are focusing more troops to the area in order to prevent any potential hostilities between the al-Baqir Brigade and the U.S.-backed forces in Deir Ezzor.
Over the weekend, the al-Baqir Brigade released a video in which one of their field commanders vowed to expel the Syrian Democratic Forces from the eastern region of the Euphrates River Valley.
The al-Baqir Brigade, which is part of the Iran-backed Local Defense Forces (LDF), is considered one of the most powerful paramilitary factions in Syria.
Made up of mostly al-Baggara rustics from rural Aleppo, the al-Baqir Brigade has established themselves as a formidable force in the Euphrates region after participating in several battles alongside the Syrian Arab Army.
[ALMASDARNEWS] Ankara is ready to start an operation against Kurdish militia in a safe zone in northeastern Syria within two weeks, if no specific measures are taken there jointly with the United States, Ottoman Turkish President His Enormity, 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. In Anatolia did Recep Bey a stately Presidential Palace decree, that has 1100 rooms. That's 968 more than in the White House, 400 more than in Versailles, and 325 more than Buckingham Palace, so you know who's really more important... said.
"If no specific measures are taken there [in the safe zone] within two weeks, we can start our own operation," Erdogan said after the Russia-The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the occupiers of Greek Asia Minor... -Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan, the abbreviation IRGC is a cognate form of Stürmabteilung (or SA), the term Supreme Guide is a cognate form of either Shah or Führer or maybe both, and they hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... summit on Syria in the Ottoman Turkish capital.
According to Erdogan, Kurdish militia from the People’s Protection Units (YPG) are keeping local population at bay.
The Ottoman Turkish leader noted that as long as the YPG and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) operate in northern Syria, the "Ottoman Turkish people will no be able to live in safety."
The United States reached an agreement with Turkey in August to create the safe zone, following months of tensions between the two NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants... allies over the presence of Kurdish hard boyz in northern Syria.
The Syrian Democratic Forces, made up of mostly Kurdish YPG fighters, have been key allies of the United States in northern Syria, where US soldiers are still stationed. But Turkey views the Kurdish forces as a threat to national security and had repeatedly threatened to launch an incursion into northern Syria to force them out of the territory.
Under the agreement reached by Ankara and Washington, Kurdish YPG forces will remove their forces and heavy weapons from the safe zone.
Earlier in September, Erdogan said that US efforts on establishing the safe zone in northeastern Syria fell short of expectations of Ankara. Ottoman Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused the US of delaying talks on the formation of the agreed safe zone, saying Washington was "dragging out" the process.
...although they all adore the new spokesperson, former Women’s March leaderette, Linda Sarsour...
[POLITICO] Some of Bernie Sanders ...The only first openly Socialist member of the U.S. Senate. Sanders was Representative-for-Life from Vermont until moving to the Senate for the rest of his life in 2006, assuming the seat vacated by Jim Jeffords. He ran for the 2016 nomination for president, to be cheated out of it by Hillary Clinton, then went back to being a socialist, waiting for 2020 to roll around... ’ fiercest supporters are sounding the alarm that the campaign is bogged down by disorganization, personality festivities, and poor communication between state operations and national headquarters.
After a pair of setbacks this week ‐ the acrimonious shakeup of his staff in New Hampshire on Sunday and loss of the Working Families Party's endorsement
... a minor “democratic socialist” party founded in 1998 in New York, and currently active in fourteen states and Washington, DC. As a result of all that activity, they have managed to elect precisely one state-level representative and one state-level senator, a tribute to the fact that Americans are uninterested in the bootless drama of minor parties...
to Elizabeth Being Native American has been part of my story since the day I was born Warren ...Dem Senatrix from Massachussetts, who traces her noble lineage all the way back to Big Chief Spouting Bull. It has been alleged that she speaks with forked tongue but she denies that. She had a DNA test to prove her lineage and it turns out she's colorless... a day later ‐ Sanders’ allies and former aides are worried that recent disappointments are not one-off stumbles but rather emblematic of larger problems in his bid for the White House. The concerns are particularly acute in New Hampshire.
"Seeing the campaign not be able to outshine Warren with WFP progressives doesn’t have me questioning WFP’s process," said Rafael Shimunov, a former national creative director for WFP and 2016 Sanders volunteer. "It has me questioning where the Bernie campaign could have done better, because I want to make sure the strongest candidate unmasks Biden and unseats Trump."
The worries come as the campaign enters a critical, more urgent phase. After Labor Day, more voters typically tune into the election and begin to make up their minds. Expectations for Sanders are sky-high, especially in New Hampshire, where he defeated Crooked Hillary Clinton ...former first lady, former secretary of state, former presidential candidate, Conqueror of Benghazi, Heroine of Tuzla, formerly described by her supporters as the smartest woman in the world, usually described by the rest of us as The Thing That Wouldn't Go Away... in 2016 by 22 percentage points.
But Warren has jumped in the national polls to tie Sanders for second place, and Joe Foreign Policy Whiz Kid Biden ...Failed seeker of the Democratic presidential nomination on multiple occasions, vice president under Barack Obama, giving it a last try in his dotage for 2020... has proven harder to knock off his first-place perch than his rivals expected.
#7
Bernie got a lot of traction when he campaigned in California in 2016. There was certainly a whole lot more enthusiasm at his rallies than Hillary's. I think if she hadn't rigged the election, he would have won. It would be foolish to count him out in 2020. I mean, he's up against Slow Joe and Fauxcahontas. I want to believe that Trump would walk all over him.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
09/18/2019 12:19
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#8
Eh, Hillary won the Democratic nomination fair and square. That just makes it all the more cartoon villain that she rigged it anyway. Like when Dirk Dastardly stops to cheat.
The DNC argued in court, and won, saying that they were a private company that could nominate whoever they like and were not obligated to respect the results of a vote.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
09/18/2019 15:48
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#9
I want to make sure the strongest candidate unmasks Biden
That *is* a curious statement. Unmasks Biden as... what? A kooky, slightly corrupt old Liberal politician who likes to smell women's hair? A lizard person? A secret Catholic? What?
Diyala (IraqiNews.com) ‐ Iraqi military intelligence forces announced on Tuesday that five Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really 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 western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... holy warriors were arrested in the eastern province of Diyala.
"Acting on intelligence information, troops of the Iraqi Military Intelligence Directorate caught five Islamic State holy warriors in Mandali district in Diyala," Alsumaria News quoted the directorate as saying in a blurb.
"The holy warriors were referred to the competent authorities for interrogation," the statement read.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/18/2019
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[FOXNEWS] California announced last week that it has added Iowa to the list of states on its ever-expanding "travel ban" list because of that state's new prohibition against funding gender-transition surgeries under Medicaid.
The announcement by state Attorney General Xavier Becerra means that as of Oct. 4, California will no longer offer taxpayer-funded trips to Iowa for any public employee or student at a state-run university.
Becerra's authority came from a 2016 California law signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown that bars state-funded travel to other states that undercut LGBT rights. The blacklist already included Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma and Mississippi.
Conservatives have called the law ineffective, inconveniencing, possibly unconstitutional and hypocritical. The state's sports teams have turned to private funding to get around the restrictions, according to The Los Angeles Times.
“The Iowa Legislature has reversed course on what was settled law under the Iowa Civil Rights Act, repealing protections for those seeking gender-affirming health care,” Becerra said in a statement. “California has taken an unambiguous stand against discrimination and government actions that would enable it."
The brouhaha began after the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in March that taxpayers could be forced to pay for gender reassignment surgery. Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a law effectively overriding that ruling two months later.
"This narrow provision simply clarifies that Iowa’s Civil Rights Act does not require taxpayer dollars to pay for sex reassignment and other similar surgeries," Reynolds spokesman Pat Garrett said in a statement at the time. "This returns us to what had been the state’s position for years."
At the federal level, the Trump administration has rolled back the Obama-era determination that sex-based discrimination prohibitions under existing law include protections for gender identity.
The Health and Human Services Department, in May, angered progressive advocates with rules that both allowed doctors not to perform certain operations and stated that "gender identity" was not protected under sex discrimination law in health care.
All it takes is amending the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which only requires a 2/3 approval by the Senate. Phrase it as making amends for 'white supremacy' and what objections could they have? /rhet question.
#7
A source of great pride for Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and now Iowa. Congratulations, Iowa! You're doing something right.
California is not yet officially part of Mexico but, when Newsom gets a call from Mexico City, he does as he is told. Beware, the demographic changes that happened in California are now taking place in Texas and other states, courtesy of the Democrats. It's all going as planned.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
09/18/2019 12:09
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[OUTLINE] Granville County Sheriff Brindell Wilkins learned one of his deputies had a tape of him making "racially offensive" comments, prosecutors say. So the North Carolina lawman encouraged another man to kill the officer, according to a felony indictment revealed late Monday night.
"The only way you gonna stop him is kill him," Wilkins allegedly told the would-be shooter in a 2014 recorded phone call about a plan to kill former deputy Joshua Freeman. The plot was not carried out.
Wilkins is charged with two felony counts of obstruction of justice charges for his failure to arrest the unnamed person or report the threat on Freeman’s life, and for also allegedly giving the man advice about how to get away with the murder.
Wilkins has been sheriff of the small county in northern North Carolina, where the biggest town is home to about 8,400 people, since 2009 and was most recently reelected in 2018. Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman, who brought the charges, told the News & Observer that Wilkins is still the sheriff.
"Technically," the prosecutor said, "he can continue to serve if he chooses to until convicted."
According to the indictment, Wilkins found out in 2014 that Joshua Freeman claimed to have a recording of the sheriff using "racially offensive language," and that the deputy planned to publicly reveal the tape and turn it over to authorities in Raleigh. It’s unclear what Wilkins might have said on that alleged tape or what became of the recording.
In the August 2014 phone call, prosecutors said, Wilkins’s "personal animosity" toward Joshua Freeman led him to go along with the plan to kill the deputy. The recorded call makes it clear the sheriff had no intention to protect Freeman or intervene, according to the indictment.
On the call, the sheriff advised the unnamed man, whom Wilkins knew, that "if you need to take care of somethin', just take care of something," according to the indictment.
The man gave Wilkins a specific time and location detailing when he planned to kill Joshua Freeman, plus described the firearm he planned to use in the shooting, the indictment says.
Wilkins then "counseled the individual how to commit the murder in a manner as to avoid identification," the indictment says.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2019
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#1
According to the indictment, Wilkins found out in 2014 that Joshua Freeman claimed to have a recording of the sheriff using "racially offensive language,"
Sounds familiar, like Sov. U. during Stalin's era.
I assume that whatever they display will be recognized by some here. We’ll post the photos as soon as they become available, for maximum identification fun.
[TWITTER]
Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Defense says it will display the Iranian weapons used in the recent attacks on Saudi Aramco facilities and will hold a press conference on Wednesday, according to a ministry statement.https://t.co/mEVjOberXnpic.twitter.com/MnYJUU9XUB
[Libya Observer] The front man for Libyan Navy Ayoub Qassim has denied accusations made against Libyan coastguards saying they have been selling immigrants colonists to human traffickers.
Qassim told news hounds on Tuesday that immigrants colonists usually try to win Europe ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... ans' sympathy by lies to obtain asylum status, adding that rescue operations in the Mediterranean happen under the oversight of international NGOs.
"The Libyan Foreign Ministry should sue NGOs and immigrants colonists who have made those allegations without evidence. The coasties is ready to cooperate with international partners if a probe will be started." Qassim remarked.
Meanwhile, ...back at the railroad tracks, Little Nell tried to kick her bound feet and scream post the snotty handkerchief Scarface Al had stuff into her mouth... the European Commission denied Monday any knowledge of international reports about violations made by the Libyan Coast Guard personnel against immigrants colonists rescued from boats in the Mediterranean.
The spokeswoman of the European Commission, said they don't mind looking into the reports about the violations' accusations against Libyan coastguards, saying their training of the Libyan coastguards was very strict and effective, Italian news agency Aki said.
An official at the Anti-Illegal Immigration Authority said detention centers are being operated as per Libyan laws and if there have been any violations, then they will be of some individuals, adding that Libya's interests lies in shutting down the centers and shake off their burdens.
Malta is going to host a mini summit on September 23 to reach a mechanism of disembarking immigrants colonists in the Mediterranean in the presence of Interior Ministers of Germany, La Belle France, and Malta as well as officials from the European Commission, besides Finland, which is the current chair country of the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... .
[ALMASDARNEWS] On Tuesday, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) under the federal Defence Ministry successfully test-fired the missile with a range of over 70 kilometres from a Su-30MKI combat aircraft as part of user trials.
DRDO said the test was carried out to ascertain and validate its performance. Astra can flay towards its target at a speed of over 5,555 kilometres per hour (4.5 Mach) with a 15-kilogram high-explosive pre-fragmented war-head. The first Astra missile was launched from the Su-30MKI in May 2014, and so far 27 tests have been carried out.
"Various Radars, Electro-Optical Tracking System (EOTS) and Sensors tracked the missile and confirmed its engagement with its target," said a blurb by the Defence Ministry.
Amid the continuing face-off with Pakistain, India has stepped up its efforts to replenish its stock of armaments. New Delhi ordered a batch of S-400 missile systems from Russia worth $5 billion. India is also in talks with Russia to launch a local S-400 production line in the country, along the lines of BrahMos cruise missile production.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will fly on India’s home-grown single-engine multirole light fighter Tejas; which will replace MiG-21 Bisons, on Thursday 19 September. Tejas jets will join the air defence system of the country alongside the French Rafale and Sukhoi Su-30 MKIs.
Recently India successfully tested the domestically developed Man-Portable Antitank Guided Missile and conducted a test flight of the modified naval version of the light combat aircraft for ’arrested landings’ at a shore-based facility.
India has also received the first batch of the "building blaster" version of its Spice-2000 bombs for the Indian Air Force. New Delhi had signed a $45 million contract with Israel in June this year, to acquire more than 100 Spice-2000 missiles under an emergency procurement deal.
Stop the presses! Newsweek has a scoop even bigger than the New York Times’ latest!!
[Newsweek] A relative of President Donald Trump has accused the self-proclaimed billionaire of being a pancake thief, having stolen a handful of flat cakes while on vacation at his late mother's former home in Scotland.
A distant cousin of the president, Alice Mackay‐related to Trump through his mother's family, the McLeods‐said the commander-in-chief is an unpleasant man who has never used any of his wealth to help his mother's local community.
The 79-year-old spoke in glowing terms about Trump's late mother‐Mary Anne MacLeod, who died in 2000‐and his older sister‐Maryanne Trump Barry, 82‐saying they were both generous people who made many contributions to the Isle of Lewis, an island located in Scotland's far northern Outer Hebrides archipelago.
“He never comes, he never calls, the vile man never gave us lots of money...,” Mrs. Mackay added. Ugh.
Mackay told Scottish newspaper The National: "I don't like the man at all, he's so unlike his mother and father." She recalled that Mary Anne and Fred Trump were "lovely parents, I don't know what went wrong with him. My mum and dad were second cousins. Every time they were over here they came to ours for dinner."
It doesn’t sound like you lot never bothered to exert yourself to visit the American branch, so it is unclear why the son should feel any obligation.
Mackay recalled one morning when the future president committed two social faux pas in quick succession. "He was here one morning I was busy making pancakes and he had forgotten my husband had died," she said. "He put a few pancakes in [his] pocket and never said 'cheerio' or anything."
Or perhaps you didn’t notice, being busy as well as sunk in grief. Possibly he did not want to intrude more than necessary, not having been an intimate, unlike his mother and sister. Though a pocket full of pancakes strikes me as an unwise move despite the compliment to the cook...
The White House did not immediately respond to Newsweek's request for comment regarding the allegation of theft.
Theft? Perhaps you’d like to bring back hanging for the stealing of a loaf of bread, O clever Newsweek journalist, and transport to Australia for a pocket full of pancakes?
Trump visited his mother's former home in the village of Tong in the northeast of the Isle of Lewis in 2008. According to The National, the president has only visited once, and spent just 97 seconds in the home where his mother was raised alongside nine siblings.
I so love visiting people who keep one eye on the clock from the moment I arrive. Did she count the spoons as well as the pancakes in the minutes that followed his departure?
During his visit, Trump said he had been "very busy‐I am building jobs all over the world‐and it's very, very tough to find the time to come back. But this just seemed an appropriate time, because I have the plane... I'm very glad I did, and I will be back again."
But he never did, because they made it clear he was not welcome.
#3
"An Impolite Visitor!" -- paper;
"His crass pancake-pilfering caper!"
"Old lady cries, 'skinflint!,'
Admits Donald didn't
Break in or get plastered or rape her."
Posted by: European Conservative ||
09/18/2019 16:41
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#13
"The stocks." And what's next on the docket?
"A man caught with cakes in his pocket."
"He scurried off, yelping..."
"When served a third helping!"
"I have here a scrap of his jacket."
#15
Something not being mentioned here is Trump is an anti germ freak. I don't see him sticking food in his pocket. It sounds more like something a rustic game keeper might do.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
09/18/2019 18:08
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[Jpost] Three of the founding and most prominent board members of the Women’s March stepped down from their positions, the organization announced Monday.
But that was not the only shakeup for the group ‐ 17 new board members have been appointed.
One of them, Zahra Billoo, a lawyer who serves as executive director of the the Socialist paradise of San Francisco ...where God struck dead Anton LaVey, home of the Sydney Ducks, ruled by Vigilance Committee from 1859 through 1867, reliably and volubly Democrat since 1964... Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations ... the Moslem Brüderbund's American arm ... , has repeatedly made comments sharply critical of Israel.
On Twitter, Billoo has said several times that Israel engages in war crimes and terrorism, and that it is an "apartheid, racist state."
The three women who resigned in July ‐ Linda Sarsour,
...to be fair, Ms Sarsour has become terribly busy lately with her new gig as spokesperson for Israel-hating Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders, who is completely untroubled by her open antisemitism...
Tamika Mallory and Bob Bland ‐ along with co-chair Carmen Perez, had been at the center of a controversy over allegations that they failed to condemn and in some cases fostered anti-Semitism in the movement. Perez remains on the board)
In one tweet from 2015, Billoo wrote that she was "more afraid of racist Zionists who support Apartheid Israel than of the mentally ill young people the #FBI recruits to join ISIS ...embracing their inner Islamic Brute... Last year she tweeted that her comments on Israel led to an interfaith group withdrawing an award it was set to give her. In a series of tweets, Billoo wrote the unnamed organization told her "that pressure opposing my award was mounting. The organization’s institutional funding was being threatened and their Jewish members were threatening to leave."
But Billoo also has ties to the Jewish community. In 2015, she wrote an article in the Huffington Post about her decision to speak at a conference organized by the American Jewish Committee that said while her views on Israel differed from those of some in attendance, she also shared many of their goals on other issues.
"Some of us may disagree on politics in the Middle East, but there is no disagreement that the rise of Islamophobia ...the irrational fear that Moslems will act the way they usually do... and anti-Semitism in the U.S. is, in its simplest form, the growth of hate against faith, and both our communities are impacted," Billoo wrote.
The anti-Semitism accusations against the Women’s March date back to Mallory’s ties to and refusal to disavow Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has a long history of making anti-Semitic comments. An article in Tablet last year also alleged that Mallory and Perez made anti-Jewish comments at Women’s March planning meetings.
Sarsour, who is Paleostinian American, has also made statements implying feminism and Zionism are incompatible.
[CNN] Veteran journalist Cokie Roberts, winner of three Emmys and a legend and trailblazer in broadcasting, has died at the age of 75, ABC News announced.
Roberts worked in television, public radio and publishing for over 40 years. She began her tenure at ABC as a contributor for "This Week with David Brinkley" and later became ABC's chief congressional analyst.
Roberts is survived by her husband Steve V. Roberts and her children Lee Roberts and Rebecca Roberts, her grandchildren Regan, Hale and Cecilia Roberts and Claiborne, Jack and Roland Hartman, along with nieces, nephews, and cousins.
[ALMASDARNEWS] US intelligence agencies have handed over a secret report to their Saudi counterparts which implicated Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan, the abbreviation IRGC is a cognate form of Stürmabteilung (or SA), the term Supreme Guide is a cognate form of either Shah or Führer or maybe both, and they hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... directly for the weekend’s attacks on two major Saudi Aramco oil facilities, the Wall Street Journal has reported, citing unnamed sources said to be familiar with the situation.
According to the report, which has yet to be shared publicly, the strikes were staged from Iran, and involved some 20 drones and at least a dozen missiles.
A Saudi official speaking to WSJ said the report was not conclusive, adding that the US side hadn’t provided sufficient evidence that Tehran was ’definitely’ behind the attacks.
On Monday, a coalition front man announced that Saudi authorities were still looking to figure out "from where" the projectiles used in the strikes were fired, saying the drones used were not launched from Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of... , as claimed by the Iran's Houthi sock puppets ...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 legitimate Yemeni government has accused the them of having ties to the Iranian government. Honest they did. 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 They like shooting off... ummm... missiles that they would have us believe they make at home in their basements. On the plus side, they did murder Ali Abdullah Saleh, which was the only way the country was ever going to be rid of him... s. According to the coalition, a preliminary investigation had given them "all indications" to believe that the weapons in both attacks "came from Iran.”
[DAWN] LAHORE: A ninth grade student of a private chain of schools’ Sanda Road campus suffered injuries allegedly when his teacher tortured him on Monday.
According to police, Mustafa Ahmed of Sanda was writing on the white board in the classroom when his teacher Adnan arrived there and told him to go to his seat.
As the student was heading to his seat, the teacher hurled abuses at him.
When the student asked the teacher why he was abusing him, he got infuriated and started slapping the boy who was rescued by his classmates.
When the students, including Ahmed, approached the principal’s office with a complaint, the teacher holding a wooden rod arrived there and started hitting the student who suffered injuries on his face and shoulders.
However, facts are stubborn; statistics are more pliable... on the intervention of the principal and the students the teacher left the scene. The injured student was taken to a nearby hospital for first aid.
The victim’s father, Muhammad Asif, said he received a call from the school principal who informed him about the incident. He alleged that the teacher had also tortured his son earlier and he had lodged a complaint against him at Islampura cop shoppe.
The Lahore CEO (Education) has taken notice of the incident and ordered an inquiry into the matter.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2019
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#1
Having been a school teacher myself, I've mixed feelings about articles like this.
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.