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Yemeni army inflicts heavy casualties on Houthi militants in Taiz
Today's Headlines
Headline Comments [Views]
Page 4: Opinion
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2 11:39 Frank G [1] 
1 14:36 g(r)omgoru [1] 
3 23:40 DooDahMan [1] 
2 00:47 lord garth [] 
4 17:09 mossomo [] 
1 12:57 M. Murcek [1] 
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Page 3: Non-WoT
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Page 6: Politix
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The Grand Turk
Turkey’s nightmares will come true if Erdogan refuses to back down
[ARABNEWS] Depending on how you look at it, 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...
is either a political genius with a keen sense of electoral timing, or his country’s worst economic nightmare. For Erdogan, politics is the art of survival ‐ and he is extremely good at that. He correctly judged voters’ temperament and called early elections on June 24. But what has been good for Erdogan at the polls has not been good for The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
, with the lira now in freefall and a major crisis brewing in Ottoman Turkish-American relations that, in turn, is pummeling the economy. Worse yet, Erdogan is just getting started.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred || 08/19/2018 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Sublime Porte

#1  Omitted in this article is the fact that in 2017 Erdogan publicly declared that Brunson was a hostage who would be freed in return for Gülen.

Erdogan believed that his position was strong enough to obviate the need for even implausible deniability.
Posted by: Elmerert Hupens2660 || 08/19/2018 8:08 Comments || Top||

#2  The nukes have reportedly been removed from Incirlik.

Except for that one buried under the runways
Posted by: Frank G || 08/19/2018 8:55 Comments || Top||

#3  . But what has been good for Erdogan at the polls has not been good for Turkey
Sing along with me the Deutschlandlied:
Deutschland, Deutschland Turkey, Turkey über alles,
Über alles in der Welt,... ♫
Posted by: magpie || 08/19/2018 11:45 Comments || Top||

#4  Also what was not shared was that Israel released a Turkish Hamas collaborator and prisoner, Ebru Ozkan, in which he was allowed to leave Israel for Turkey in mid-July. Brunson, meanwhile, was released into house arrest on Wednesday [July 25th] but [Brunson] has not been permitted to leave Turkey.

It was understood Brunson would be free to leave Turkey, Erdogan renigged.
Posted by: mossomo || 08/19/2018 17:09 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Politix
Intelligence Community eats it's own: Clapper - Brennan's Rhetoric Has ‘Become an Issue In and Of Itself'
[Breitbart] Sunday on CNN’s "State of the Union," former director of National Intelligence James Clapper said the removal of former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance by President Donald Trump was in part because of Brennan’s "rhetoric."

When asked if Brennan’s hyperbole is an issue, Clapper said, "I think it is. I think John is sort of like a freight train and he’s going to say what’s on his mind. I think, though, that the common denominator among all of us that have been speaking up, though, is genuine concern about the jeopardy or threats to our institutions and values. And we all express that in different ways. And I think this is what this is really about. But I think John and his rhetoric have become an issue in and of itself."
Posted by: Besoeker || 08/19/2018 11:28 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  The boardroom scene in Rising Sun where Kohai whispers to Webster Smith, "They're distancing themselves..."
Posted by: M. Murcek || 08/19/2018 12:01 Comments || Top||

#2  Here's a radical thought. Maybe Brennan should never have been CIA director.
Posted by: Iblis || 08/19/2018 13:36 Comments || Top||

#3  Too late for that, but you might be on to something with the "radical" part.
Posted by: DooDahMan || 08/19/2018 23:37 Comments || Top||


Bolton: Brennan, Others in Obama Administration ‘Were Politicizing Intelligence'
[Breitbart] Sunday on ABC’s "This Week," national security adviser John Bolton said the removal of former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance by President Donald Trump was justified because "he and others in the Obama administration were politicizing intelligence."

Bolton said, "It was my view at the time that he and others in the Obama administration were politicizing intelligence. I think that is a very dangerous thing to do."
Pithy comments follow:
Posted by: Besoeker || 08/19/2018 11:20 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Darth Bolton knows the game, now Trump knows the game. I would love to be in room when Darth leans over to Donald and quietly says:

"Mr. President, here's the way this shi* works."
Posted by: Besoeker || 08/19/2018 11:25 Comments || Top||

#2  Intelligence has been politicized for goodness knows how long. Just ask the CIA.
Posted by: DooDahMan || 08/19/2018 23:39 Comments || Top||


'As needed basis' for security clearances explained by General Mattis
[Breitbart] Defense Secretary Jim Mattis expressed solidarity with President Trump’s stripping of former Obama CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance earlier this week.

"All I can tell you is, I have taken security clearances away from people in my previous time in uniform, and a security clearance is something that is granted on an as-needed basis," he told Pentagon reporters traveling with him in South America on Friday.
Posted by: Besoeker || 08/19/2018 04:58 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  ...Hear, hear. Once you're no longer employed by the Federal Government (or a contractor), you lose the fu@king clearance - is that so hard to figure out? There is no First Amendment right to a clearance (anyone who suggests that losing a clearance is a 'free speech' issue should be soundly thrashed everytime they bring it up), and there's certainly no right to a clearance while you are actively working to cripple or for that matter take down a President of the United States. Anyone who believes Brennan wasn't using his access to further his agenda is either a useful idiot or flat-out complicit.

And while we're at it, pull the clearances on every last one of those morons who signed the letter complaining about it. That alone may do more to put the fear of God and Donald J. Trump into people than anything else he's done so far.

Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski || 08/19/2018 9:06 Comments || Top||

#2  Anyone who believes Brennan wasn't using his access to further his agenda is either a useful idiot or flat-out complicit.

People on the 'inside' still feel comfortable talking with him (Brennan, Clapper, etc). Without clearance.... not so comfortable. They (some of the talkers) still have to pass polygraph exams.

You want to know where the leaks come from? Take a guess.
Posted by: Besoeker || 08/19/2018 11:13 Comments || Top||

#3  Gee, what a concept: "need to know" (NTK).
Posted by: DooDahMan || 08/19/2018 23:40 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
Five biggest challenges facing new Pakistan PM Imran Khan
[AlAhram] Pakistain's new government led by prime minister Imran Khan
... aka Taliban Khan, who who convinced himself that playing cricket qualified him to lead a nuclear-armed nation with severe personality problems...
faces myriad challenges. The cricketing icon turned politician will have to make hard choices, and quickly.

Here is a rundown of the biggest hurdles Pakistain is facing:
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife || 08/19/2018 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  #6 - being himself.
Posted by: newc || 08/19/2018 0:18 Comments || Top||

#2  I don't think AlAhram could bring itself to admit it but other significant problems of Pakistan include

- mal education of kids in madrassas
- persecution of non Muslim minorities (and of Shia Muslims)
- problems because of sharia compliant financing rules
- corruption at every level of state and provincial and municipal government
Posted by: lord garth || 08/19/2018 0:47 Comments || Top||


Terror Networks
The Islamic State's push for a new caliphate
[Jpost] New reports suggest the terror group is recovering in Iraq and Syria; Khorasan Province is eyeing a new caliphate in Afghanistan.

According to findings by the Lead Inspector General of Operation Inherent Resolve, the United States-led military coalition against the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
, the terror group is much larger than previously thought and still poses a significant threat. Citing Defense Department figures, the report pegs the total number of ISIS fighters in Iraq at up to 17,000, and 14,000 in Syria. A soon-to-be-released report by Republican politicians, portions of which were leaked to the media, not only corroborates these numbers but also claims that intelligence provided by US Central Command (CENTCOM) overstated the success of the anti-ISIS campaign.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife || 08/19/2018 00:00 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under: Islamic State

#1  St. Paul?
Posted by: M. Murcek || 08/19/2018 12:57 Comments || Top||


Government
KEK Wars 4 - the Future
Conclusion:
On the basis of the points discussed above, I think it's safe to predict that no future attempt to stop Trump in his tracks will get any further than the ones we've already seen. The efforts to hit Trump over the head with an investigation or stab him with media tirades will doubtless continue‐in fact, with an eye toward the legends, I wouldn't be surprised if the Mueller investigation is still lumbering ineffectually onward for a long time to come, and I'd be amazed if there's the slightest decrease in the sniping from the media and the official intelligentsia‐but none of it will affect the outcome. At the beginning of 2025, when Donald Trump hands over the presidency to his successor, he'll look back on a long string of crises that never quite managed to derail him. By that time, furthermore, the nation and the world will have changed irrevocably.

With an eye to the first two parts of this series of posts, it's not too hard to see the new realities taking shape on the far side of the Trump era. The drastic pruning of federal regulations, the end of one-sided free trade agreements that encourage the offshoring of working class jobs, and the end of the tacit encouragement of mass illegal immigration and the resulting downward pressure on wages and benefits‐all core policies of the Trump administration‐represent a dramatic rebalancing of economic power in American society away from the managerial aristocracy. The realities of politics being what they are, that will bring about an equally dramatic rebalancing of political influence. We're already seeing a lively socialist insurgency threatening the Democratic Party establishment, and a less dramatic but equally far-reaching influx of populist candidates into the GOP is also well under way. Despite all the shrill denunciations of the mainstream media and the official intelligentsia, There Is An Alternative‐in fact, more than one‐and that in itself shows that the enforced consensus of the last forty years is shattering around us.

That will have equally dramatic effects on the international scene. The managerial aristocracy of the recent past had the power and wealth it did because the United States maintained hegemony over most of the world. Our empire‐yes, I know, it's impolite to use such terms, but let's please be real‐our empire, as I was saying, gave the five per cent of humanity that lived in the United States a quarter of the planet's resources and a third of its manufactured products, and of course those were by no means equally distributed among Americans. The way that old-money families and tech-stock godzillionaires alike have by and large rallied around the opposition to the Trump administration shows that they know perfectly well which way the wind is blowing.

In the history of every empire, there comes a point when the costs of maintaining the empire exceeds the profits. We got to that point quite some time ago, and the policies that drove the US working class into destitution and misery can best be understood as attempts to keep the privileged classes comfortable by shoving the rising costs of empire onto everyone else. The end of free-trade arrangements, the retreat from foreign military commitments such as NATO, and the first steps toward a modus vivendi with Russia, North Korea, and other rival nations are necessary steps in the retreat from empire. Off in the distance, on the far side of the Changer's upriver journey, we can see the first dim foreshadowings of post-imperial America, and with any luck, of a nation a little less riven by rigid class barriers and so a little more likely to deal with its many pressing problems.

Mind you, fifty years from now, there will doubtless still be people who get their moth-eaten pussy hats down from a box in the attic, and reminisce fondly about the good old days when the United States could still pretend to be the world's irreplaceable nation, when Barack Obama used drone strikes to vaporize wedding parties on the other side of the world and the deplorables still knew their place. That's the nature of outworn aristocracies; on a broader scale, it's the nature of historical change‐especially when the deep patterns of the collective psyche surge into action and leave the presumptions of a fading era shattered in their wake.
Posted by: Bobby || 08/19/2018 08:46 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Ummmmmmmmmmm...should be KEK Wars. Before coffee...
Posted by: Bobby || 08/19/2018 11:11 Comments || Top||

#2  Fixed
Posted by: Frank G || 08/19/2018 11:39 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
Behind the exodus from US state schools
[BBC] The number of children taught at home in the US is steadily growing. What's behind parents' concerns with the education system?

As fierce national debate over controversial social justice issues spills into America's public schools, many parents are responding by pulling their children out.

This is playing out in Texas especially, because even though independent-minded Texans typically don't have much time for government meddling, many nevertheless adhere to that higher form of government - religion.

Hence many Texas parents are increasingly frustrated at what they perceive as religion being phased out of Texas public schools.

"Religion is a taboo subject in public schools across the board," says Shannon Helmi in Austin, the Texas capital, where she has chosen to educate her four daughters privately with Regina Caeli, a homeschooling hybrid that teaches a curriculum based on the Catholic tradition.
"I don't think our state educators set out to be anti-religion, rather the education provided by the state must not be biased towards any religion. The problem [is that] an unbiased approach in education is unattainable - education is based on some original source, so if our education is based on no source it's ultimately anti-source."

Parents and teachers in Texas also complain about the state's public schools being made to march to the tune of an aggressive liberal agenda.

The result sees Texas parents voting with their feet and embracing a plethora of alternative private schooling systems that teach the likes of Christian theologians and Greek philosophers.
Posted by: Besoeker || 08/19/2018 06:09 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  And we haven't even mentioned 4R
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 08/19/2018 14:36 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
26[untagged]
8Islamic State
5Govt of Pakistan
4Sublime Porte
3Houthis
2Commies
2Govt of Iraq
2Hamas
1Taliban
1al-Nusra
1Boko Haram (ISIS)
1Govt of Iran
1Govt of Syria
1Hezbollah
1PLO

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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.
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Two weeks of WOT
Sun 2018-08-19
  Yemeni army inflicts heavy casualties on Houthi militants in Taiz
Sat 2018-08-18
  HTS executes 6 people accused of being ISIS members in Idlib
Fri 2018-08-17
  American Couple Dies Tragically While Biking Through ISIS Territory Trying to Prove Evil Does Not Exist
Thu 2018-08-16
  ISIS Killer Caught in Sacramento
Wed 2018-08-15
  101st Airborne, US Special Forces Called Into Ghazni Battle
Tue 2018-08-14
  Islamic State member sentenced to death over killing security personnel in Nineveh
Mon 2018-08-13
  The FBI Finally Makes Peter Strzok Redundant
Sun 2018-08-12
  Antifa to Protest ‘Alt-Right’ in D.C.: Abolish ICE, No Borders, Close Prisons
Sat 2018-08-11
  Iraqi cleric "Tater" Sadr wins election vote recount
Fri 2018-08-10
  Report: Ceasefire reached between Israel and Hamas
Thu 2018-08-09
  Dozens dead after school bus carrying "children" in Yemen hit by airstrike
Wed 2018-08-08
  Israel pounds Hamas after 15 injured in rocket barrage
Tue 2018-08-07
  11 Children Rescued From New Mexico Compound Run by Army Muslim Extremists
Mon 2018-08-06
  Saudi Arabia declares Canadian ambassador persona non grata, orders him to leave in 24 hours
Sun 2018-08-05
  Iran protesters attack religious school in province near Tehran

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