[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] In a verdict hearing that ended in less than an hour after five weeks of jury trial deliberations, a Houston district court has convicted a Jordanian immigrant of murdering his daughter’s husband and another close friend in what prosecutors said were "honor killings".
Ali Mahwood-Awad Irsan, 60, was found guilty of planning the two murders as part of broader plot to kill five people, including his daughter, after she bravely ran away from home, converted to Christianity and married a Christian man.
Family members of the victims said the quick verdict indicated that the jury was certain Irsan was guilty and that "honor killings" were unacceptable.
Michael Creed, the brother of Coty Beavers, one of the victims, said that "honor killings have no place in American society" and that "these are not infrequent events that happen in some random part of the world. They’re happening in America and they’re on the rise".
A punishment hearing began on Friday where the jury will determine if Irsan should be sentenced to death or life without parole for the double homicide of 28-year-old Beavers in November 2012 and Gelareh Bagherzadeh, an Iranian activist who was a close friend of Irsan’s daughter, 11 months earlier.
The mills of Justice grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/29/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
houston chronicle also did a story on this a few days ago but no national coverage
Posted by: lord garth ||
07/29/2018 0:41 Comments ||
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#2
Can they make the straps on the gurney halal?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/29/2018 9:52 Comments ||
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#3
“Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs." - Charles James Napier
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been suspended from Facebook for bullying and hate speech and is close to having pages tied to him and his Infowars website removed from the platform, the social media network said on Friday.
The radio host’s personal profile was banned for 30 days after it was found to have uploaded four videos published on pages maintained by Jones and Infowars that went against community standards, Facebook said.
The videos have been removed and Infowars and Jones’ pages "are close to being unpublished given recent community standards violations," Facebook said in a statement.
Content removals count as "strikes" against individual pages. Pages maintained by Jones and Infowars have remained active because they have not crossed "a certain threshold of strikes" necessary for them to be unpublished, Facebook said.
Videos Removed
YouTube removed four Alex Jones videos earlier this week and said Jones’ Infowars website faced permanent removal if his content was given three community strikes within 90 days.
"Our Community Standards make it clear that we prohibit content that encourages physical harm, or attacks someone based on their religious affiliation or gender identity [hate speech]," Facebook said. "We remove content that violates our standards as soon as we’re aware of it.
Infowars did not respond to a request for comment. Jones has defended the videos on Twitter as being "critical of liberalism."
Since founding Infowars in 1999, Jones has built a vast audience. Among theories he has promoted is that the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington were staged by the government.
The Facebook suspension means Jones cannot post on his personal profile or his pages and cannot message, comment or post anywhere else on Facebook. Other people are notified that he is banned, the company said.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/29/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
He is a douche, but it is still free speech, right?
#4
So. Social media companies attack the "fake news" problem via selective censorship of opinion sources they disagree with. Meanwhile I get the "This is the IRS. This is your last chance to resolve your unpaid taxes..." robocall. FCC has no plans to do anything about it. I know it's a scam but it terrifies a lot of old people every day and some actually end up getting robbed.
I really have no faith in companies "self policing" and even less faith in the actual "police" my tax dollars pay for.
Nerd Neutrality!
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/29/2018 8:39 Comments ||
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#5
Next time they try the "Safe Harbor Defense" as a co-defendant in a libel/slander lawsuit will be interesting. When you start censoring people you start be liable for not censoring people...
#6
FB, Twitter, Google, and U-tube are all engaging in various forms of censorship. The reason many are dumping these platforms outright or searching for/using alternatives.
#7
facebook is a non govt org and may discriminate on the basis of political views if it wants
As the overwhelmingly dominant, almost monopolistic player on social media web sites, it should eventually be forced, by government regulation, to allow all content except for that which is prohibited by law.
[Al Jazeera] President Emmerson Mnangagwa promised to build an "open" and "prosperous" Zim-bob-we on the last day of election campaigning, just as his closest challenger Nelson Chamisa told supporters that "victory was certain".
Zim-bob-weans will head to the polls on Monday in the first election in nearly four decades where the name of long-time leader Bob Muggsy Mugabe Nonagenarian President-for-Life of Zim-bob-we who turned the former Breadbasket of Africa into the African Basket Case. Dumped in November 2017 when the Missus decided she wanted to be president, and opposed heer might against Crocodile Mnangawa Important safety tip: If your opponent goes by the name Crocodile andf your title is Shopper in Chief let him win.... will not be on the ballot form.
A total of 23 presidential hopefuls are vying for Zim-bob-we's top seat. The results are expected to be released by August 4. If no candidate wins 50 percent plus one of the votes, a runoff will be held on September 8.
As campaigning drew to a close on Saturday, Mnangagwa, of the ruling ZANU-PF party, and Chamisa, of the main opposition MDC alliance, held rival rallies in front of enthusiastic crowds in the capital, Harare.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/29/2018 00:00 ||
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[1 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
[AsiaTimes] A 2016 report from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) shows that the Levant region – which includes Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Syria and Turkey – is currently going through its worst drought in around 900 years.
A DOOM and GLOOM article.
This is likely to get worse, too, according to the recent International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This has concluded that by the end of the century, the Middle East as a whole will be some 40% drier than it is now, if current trends continue.
At the same time, there has been a huge increase in population.
While in 1950, the Middle East and North Africa was home to some 110 million people, by 2017, this had reached 569 million. According to a recent European Union-funded research project by MENARA, if current trends continue, the figure will be more than one billion by the end of the century.
In some countries too, such as Iran and Turkey, the government actively encourages citizens to have even larger families, adding to the pressure on dwindling resources.
Syria is also an example of this. The country’s main bread basket is the northeastern Hasaka region. This has also historically been a part of the country with a large ethnic Kurdish population.
“From the 1950s, Syria pursued a policy of Arabisation of this area,” says Professor Jan Selby, from the International Relations Department at Sussex University. “Many Syrian Arabs were resettled there to marginalise the Kurds, with whom the regime was in conflict. This rapidly increased the population and the pressure on water resources. In other words, it wasn’t so much that environmental problems caused conflict, as that conflict caused environmental problems.”
In the Gulf, meanwhile, highly arid states have invested in schemes such as desalination plants to address their growing populations and water needs.
Indeed, despite having no permanent surface water and a fast vanishing aquifer, the Gulf states are now amongst the heaviest users of water per person in the world.
Desalination may not be a long-term answer however.
“There is an unintended consequence,” says Aisha Al-Sarihi, Visiting Scholar at the Arab Gulf State Institute in Washington. “There is a lot of use of energy to desalinate, which means increasing oil and gas use, which in turn increases greenhouse gas emissions, negatively affecting climate change.”
One other feature of the region is that some 60% of its surface water resources are trans-boundary, running across borders.
At the same time, most of the region’s nations also share transboundary aquifers – the large, underground water resources often accessed by farmers, via wells.
“If we are looking for a solution,” adds Dr. Shadkam, “we should stop the blame game and adapt as soon as possible. If we don’t, the Middle East will become uninhabitable in the near future.”
#3
Also, keep turning more Moslem and supporting this bullshit shitstain phony palestineas an antagonist.
There are only really around 20,000 real "Palestinians that were there before you Arab idiots showed up to show solidarity.
Everything else from the existence of this state has been and is a fraud. It is the world proving their hatred of the Jews on MY HDTV every day.
I rebuke you in whole cloth. Go find homes for all those phony Arab bombers you trained Moslem Empire bitches. Get them out of Mine Israel.
Because I AM not satisfied with your phony progress.
#11
An African spots a giraffe.
Its back and its neck make a graph:
Three billion black faces
Enabled by... racists.
"You're welcome!" cry crackers, and laugh.
[PRESSTV] US intelligence officials say Russian hackers are shifting their focus on the country’s power grid rather than its electoral systems, a report says.
According to a New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... report on Saturday, the hackers are "state-sponsored."
Moscow has already dismissed allegations of meddling in the 2016 election, which yielded President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... .
Citing "intelligence officials and executives of the companies that oversee the world’s computer networks," the American newspaper said the hackers have boosted efforts to implant malware in the electrical grid.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/29/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
Electoral - electrical. It's the sort of mistake Mad Maxine or Hank Johnson could get behind...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/29/2018 7:25 Comments ||
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#2
Note to mention the Russian shift in attacks to our ecclesiastical community. They're bloody everywhere.
[DAWN] A five-year-old girl was allegedly raped in Chak Bharki area of Jahanian, Khanewal on July 23, but a first-information report (FIR) of the case was only registered today due to local police's election duties, DawnNewsTV reported.
The child was reportedly subjected to rape by the gatekeeper of the school she goes to. A medical examination had confirmed her ordeal; however, it took the police five days to register the FIR and arrest the accused.
The SHO of the area told DawnNewsTV that since the police staff was busy with their elections duties, they did not get a chance to conduct investigations right away.
The police sprang into action once the victim's family's protest at the cop shoppe caught the media's attention.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/29/2018 00:00 ||
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h/t Instapundit
Three senators introduced legislation July 25 to reform commercial space regulations, including a provision that conflicts with language in a bill passed by the House.
The Space Frontier Act, S. 3277, primarily focuses on reforms to regulation of commercial launches and remote sensing. It includes language calling for streamlining of processes for licensing launches and reentries as well as for licensing remote sensing spacecraft. It also includes language authorizing an extension of the International Space Station to 2030. It is the 21st century after all
#1
The remote sensing laws are so stupid that Musk and SpaceX got in trouble for the Earth coming itto view on their launch feed while releasing a satellite. Seriously!
#2
Even worse that commercial loop around the moon for paying customers? The government wants proof they will not show photos looking back at Earth. They even suggested not permitting the paying customers to carry cameras.
[AsiaTimes] Collapse of Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoy Dam may have killed hundreds while exposing the poor governance and endemic corruption under hidebound communist rule.
The dam is operated by Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoy Power Company (PNPC), a joint venture between the state-run Lao Holding State Enterprise, one Thai and two South Korean companies. Asia Times’ calls to representatives of the Lao company went unanswered.
The government and the dam’s operating company are likely to place the blame solely on the high levels of rainfall, say analysts, rather than question whether it was the fault of poor standards in the construction of the dam.
The construction standards of numerous hydropower projects in Laos have long been questioned by industry experts. Many are built too quickly and by subpar methods, analysts say, while the government rarely inspects the projects, giving the developers carte blanche over standards and safety measures.
The operating company of the Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoy Dam “managed the water in the reservoir very poorly, and so they are responsible. However, government oversight was lax, but I am not sure if the people will blame the government or just the company. We will have to see about that,” says Ian Baird, a Laos expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States.
Laos has been controlled by the communist Lao Revolutionary Party since 1975. It only opened up to the international community in the late 1980s.
Some experts say this week’s disaster was caused by a combination of a haphazardly built dam and weeks of heavy rainfall. According to one estimate, rainfall has been three times heavier than usual.
Still, Laos is known for its unpredictable downpours which, commentators say, the hydropower plant operators must have understood before starting their projects.
“There are major risks from dam designs that are unable to cope with extreme weather events and conditions, such as very heavy rains. Unpredictable and extreme weather events are becoming more frequent in Laos and the region due to climate change,” reads a statement by International Rivers, an advocacy group.
Heavy rainfall this month has also caused significant damage in other parts of the country. Dozens of villages in Oudomxay and Luang Prabang, two provinces in the country’s north, were hit by floods and landslides after severe rainstorms.
Nobody is thought to have died in these incidents, but more than 3,500 households were affected in Oudomxay province, local media reported.
Such was the damage that Party General Secretary Bounnhang Vorachith and senior military officials reportedly visited the area on July 22, the day before the Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoy Dam burst.
#1
Proper dam design includes an emergency spillway, so unexpected peak flows are controlled. Like that dam in California a few months back. The one where the emergency spillway was nearly washed away.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/29/2018 7:58 Comments ||
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#2
See: The Circus of Dr. Lao with Tony Curtis.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/29/2018 8:12 Comments ||
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#3
Oops. The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao Tony Randall. My memory is shot over the weekends...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/29/2018 8:13 Comments ||
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#4
re: #3, careful MM. When that starts happening your mind won't come back till Wed...or Thurs....or Friday...and then you're old.
#11
Throughout much of Asia and other parts of the Third World "communism" is a Branding concept to get people to accept having their country's economy run for the benefit of Chinese mercantilism rather than for their own.
#12
@ #1 The Orville dam blowout was 16 months ago and they are still working on an epic $1 billion restoration project. At its worst, there was more water flowing through the breach than Niagara Falls(!) at flood stage.
The main cause of the spillway failures was Governor Brown's neglect of proper maintenance. So this was also due to Communist party failings.
[Al Jazeera] Ruling Cambodian People's Party expected to sweep vote as banned main opposition party calls for boycott of 'sham' poll
Posted by: Fred ||
07/29/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
A number of countries, including Russia, China and Indonesia have sent observers, to watch polling but Japan, a long-time supporter of the Cambodian government, has refused to do so.
Uh, I thought Cambodia was basically a Chinese client state, just like it was back in the Khmer Rouge era?
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/29/2018 14:59 Comments ||
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#3
Frank nailed it. Chicago won't even prosecute felons caught with weapons. One recent case had the prosecutors recommend home incarceration with an ankle bracelet for someone arrested while driving around with their monitoring station plugged into their car...
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
07/29/2018 17:32 Comments ||
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My god - look at all the problems Trump is inflicting on the moonbat community - HE MUST BE STOPPED, NOW!!
[Boston Herald / Howie Carr]
...
I just stumbled across a Twitter thread in which assorted moonbats are commiserating with one another over the assorted epidemics that have apparently devastated the non-working classes since Nov. 8, 2016.
It’s amazing there’s anyone even left alive to cash their trust-fund checks in places like Nantucket and Northampton, the plague is so pervasive.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the "freshman 15" ‐ the fact that kids going off to college often put on weight. Now I read that physicians have isolated a new outbreak of obesity.
A woman named Catherine tweeted, "My doctor said, ’Oh, I see you’ve gained the Trump 20."
In other words, across the land, menopausal women in pink hats are having this conversation with their spouses: "Honey, does this president make my rear end look fat?"
Another woman, K-Town, claimed on the same thread that she has shattered four dental fillings since the election. You know, grinding her teeth in rage.
Alcoholism is likewise ravaging the Social Justice Warriors. Alisha tweeted about this conversation with her physician.
"Dr: ’Huh, your sugars are high.’ Me: ’Um, could it be the 1.5 bottles of wine I drink daily since Nov. ’16?’ "
Barbara Bly: "I had to talk about sadness with my doctor and now take an anti-anxiety pill every day. It’s better than drinking myself stupid every night."
Madison: "I regularly lie on my OBGYN’s depression questionnaire. Like, no I can’t sleep and I’m sad all the time but I know the cause and there’s nothing you can do unless you’ve got a time machine Dr. Reynard...."
Neil Scovell: "Last night, I was exhausted but while I was trying to sleep, all I could think about is how Trump would launch a nuclear attack just as a distraction. So much for sleeping."
TechGirl: "When the doctor asked if I’m anxious, I said, ’No, except for watching the President threaten nuclear war on Twitter.’ "
Megan: "My therapist says the same thing! She said it’s worse than 9/11 with most of her patients." Read on for tales of pain & suffering...
#2
Barbara Bly: "I had to talk about sadness with my doctor and now take an anti-anxiety pill every day. It’s better than drinking myself stupid every night."
It's not the alcohol. You started with a low baseline
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/29/2018 10:35 Comments ||
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#3
Neil Scovell: "Last night, I was exhausted but while I was trying to sleep, all I could think about is how Trump would launch a nuclear attack just as a distraction. So much for sleeping."
Dear Neil - may I call you Neil? Thank you so much.
How best shall I put this? Ah, got just the thing. A very wise man named Edward Burke, when once faced with similar nonsense-on-stilts, replied, "No one who is allowed to go about without a keeper could possibly believe that."
Neil, you're the f&@%ing problem, not the President. If you truly and earnestly believe that, why haven't you left?
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
07/29/2018 11:23 Comments ||
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#4
Good times, good times.
Posted by: Matt ||
07/29/2018 11:24 Comments ||
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#9
your tears of unfathomable sadness are delicious
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/29/2018 13:19 Comments ||
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#10
No one who is allowed to go about without a keeper could possibly believe that.
I need to make a clever graphic to post on FB. I would use it many times a day.
I continue to marvel at the complete infantile nature of a fair part of the citizenry, when I'm not laughing at it....
[The Hill] - Therapists in the U.S. say they have seen a rise in politically-related anxiety under the Trump presidency.
Though a condition has not been officially named, therapists and patients have referred to it as "Trump Anxiety Disorder," according to a report from Canada’s CBC News.
Elisabeth LaMotte, the founder of the D.C. Counseling and Psychotherapy Center in Washington, D.C., told CBC that there is a "collective anxiety" among her patients related to President Trump’s rhetoric and policies.
"There is a fear of the world ending," she said. "It's very disorienting and constantly unsettling."
She said that Trump critics whom she treats exhibit similar behavior to patients who have a parent with a personality disorder.
"Whether it's conscious or not, I think we look to the president of the United States as a psychological parent," LaMotte said.
#1
Once upon a time, in some areas, only those vested in the country voted. Theoretically these were supposed to be men who were property owners, or served the nation in roles like military, fire and police. In that world one would not expect to find "Trump Anxiety Disorder" victims anywhere near a polling place as even owning property seems unlikely for them... Just saying...
#4
Personally, I very much LIKE Trump. I voted for him and I knew what he would do to the Obama 'Legacy" on day one.
And all you snowflakes and pu**y-hats can just learn to EMBRACE the SU*K..
Posted by: Pearl Gleasing3315 ||
07/29/2018 11:42 Comments ||
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#5
Perhaps if they tried to learn about both sides of the issue instead of discounting one side entirely they might understand the world a lot better.interesting point, I have tried to get some of the more "smarter" libs to read some VDH and other pretty well written and understandable arguments and they get about 1/4 of the way through and then complain they can't understand it, I seriously don't think any of them get any info for themselves and rely wholly on talking heads to tell them what to think, amazing considering that before the election their brains seemed to be working pretty well, afterwards, not so much
h/t Instapundit
Schools keep the materials they use to train investigators who handle accusations of sexual assault and harassment under lock and key. Attorneys have been trying to get these materials for years, with limited success.
Whenever the training materials are made public, it’s obvious how the school’s reach absurd decisions against male students accused of sexual misconduct ‐ the training heavily biases administrators in favor of the accuser. A blueprint for the University of Texas system included the incredibly misleading claim that just 2% to 10% of accusations are false (implying that investigators are probably right to assume an accuser’s story). That blueprint also instructed campus police to conduct their investigation in such a way to "anticipate" and "counter" likely defense strategies, including the suggestion that officers only take the accuser’s statement once to avoid documenting inconsistencies that could be used by the defense.
Now a judge has questioned such training after materials were released to a male student at the University of Mississippi who was expelled for allegedly sexually assaulting a female student. NKVD?
#1
Institutionalized disparate impact in gender, versus race, is applicable. Looks like our institutions of 'higher learning' can't be trusted with the power to judge and independent outsiders are required to end the disparate impact. Sic a dog on a dog.
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.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] In a verdict hearing that ended in less than an hour after five weeks of jury trial deliberations, a Houston district court has convicted a Jordanian immigrant of murdering his daughter’s husband and another close friend in what prosecutors said were "honor killings".
[DAWN] A five-year-old girl was allegedly raped in Chak Bharki area of Jahanian, Khanewal on July 23, but a first-information report (FIR) of the case was only registered today due to local police's election duties, DawnNewsTV reported.
