Every once in a while we check in to see if it's still going as badly as it was ... and every time it is. This is something Governor Perry (R, possible presidential contender) and his successors ought to be fixing on their own -- surely it's against Texas state law for the law enforcement officers within their borders to break the law?
[LatinAmericanHeraldTribune] 52-year-old former Jarrell, Texas, Police Chief Andres Tomas Gutierrez was sentenced to 54 months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release for a wire fraud/theft of honest services scheme announced United States Attorney Robert Pitman; Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Special Agent In Charge Janice Ayala in San Antonio; Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector Generalâ Investigations Special Agent In Charge J. Kirk Beauchamp in Houston; and Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent In Charge Christopher H. Combs, San Antonio Division.
On February 7, 2014, Gutierrez pleaded guilty to the wire fraud/theft of honest services charge. By pleading guilty, Gutierrez admitted that from the Fall of 2011 to November 2013, he devised a scheme to defraud and deprive the citizens of Jarrell of their right to his honest services through bribery and concealment of information. Gutierrez solicited and accepted cash bribes--between $10,000 and $40,000--from several undocumented aliens in return for requesting and obtaining for the aliens limited immigration benefits that the U.S. government intended and designed for law enforcement purposes. Gutierrez falsely represented to the U.S. government that the undocumented aliens were assisting the Jarrell Police Department with ongoing investigations into narcotics trafficking and human trafficking.
[Ynet] Two kabooms shook the Afghan capital on Tuesday, leaving seven army officers maimed after a kaboom on their bus, while a grenade blast in the diplomatic quarter caused no casualties but led to the arrest of a suspect, officials said. Kabul has suffered a growing number of bombings by the Taliban and other jihadist gunnies as foreign combat troops withdraw from a 13-year-long war, leaving behind a smaller support mission.
Early on Tuesday, a remote-controlled bomb went kaboom! on the city's outskirts as a bus carrying Afghan army personnel passed by, said Zahir Azimi, a front man for the Afghan defence ministry. Seven of the bus passengers were maimed.
[AnNahar] A new air strike hit the Libyan capital's sole operational airport on Tuesday, a day after a raid claimed by forces loyal to a prominent anti-Islamist general, witnesses said.
Mitiga air base, in an eastern suburb of Tripoli ...a confusing city, one end of which is located in Lebanon and the other end of which is the capital of Libya. Its chief distinction is being mentioned in the Marine Hymn... , has been the city's only working airfield since damage from heavy fighting forced the closure of its civilian airport in July.
"We heard the roar of a plane then several kabooms around the airport perimeter," a witness told AFP.
He had no word on any casualties or damage.
On Monday, a low-flying fighter jet fired two missiles at the air base, which, like the rest of the capital, is controlled by Islamist-backed militia opposed to the internationally recognised government.
A security source said the strike caused no damage to the terminal or runway, although flights were temporarily diverted to Misrata airport, 200 kilometres (125 miles) east of Tripoli.
Forces loyal to retired general Khalifa Haftar ... 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. 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... , who has been leading a separate government-backed offensive against Islamist militia in Libya's second city Bengahzi, said they carried out the Monday air strike.
"It was our air forces which carried out the air raid on Mitiga base," held by "terrorist groups", General Saqr al-Jarrushi, a front man for Haftar, told Agence La Belle France Presse.
More than three years after dictator Moamer Qadaffy was toppled and killed in a NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... -backed revolt, Libya is awash with weapons and powerful militias, and run by rival governments and parliaments.
The internationally recognised government of Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thani has been based in the remote east of the country since the militia takeover of the capital in August.
All three main cities -- Tripoli, Benghazi and Misrata -- are largely controlled by militias opposed to Thani's government.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
11/26/2014 00:00 ||
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[11127 views]
Top|| File under: Arab Spring
#1
Not to state the obvious but Mitiga is Wheelis AFB.
[AnNahar] Two soldiers in a convoy providing security to a government minister were killed Tuesday when they drove over a landmine in northern Mali, a defense ministry official told AFP.
Rural Development Minister Bocary Tereta was unhurt in the attack, and it was not clear whether he was the intended target as the area, a hotbed of Lion of Islam activity on the edge of the Sahara desert, is heavily mined.
One of the cars in the minister's convoy hit the mine as they left the largest northern city of Gao on Tuesday to go to Bourem, the official said.
"At least two Malian soldiers were killed, five others were seriously maimed."
Bourem, a small desert town on the left bank of the River Niger to the north of Gao, was the scene of a botched suicide kaboom on Friday in which the bomber accidentally detonated his explosives, killing only himself.
Northern Mali fell under the control of Al-Qaeda-linked jihadist groups for most of 2012 before they were ousted by a French-led military offensive.
The operation smashed their infrastructure but disparate separatist and Islamist rebel groups continue to carry out sporadic attacks against Malian and foreign troops across the northern desert.
[AnNahar] Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... has taken over another town in Nigeria's far northeast, a politician, a local government official and a security source said on Tuesday, after bully boy fighters attacked on market day.
Maina Ma'aji Lawan, who represents northern Borno state in Nigeria's Senate, said the Islamists were in control of Damasak, on the border with neighbouring Niger.
Nigerian soldiers and hundreds of residents fled across the frontier to seek sanctuary when the heavily armed Death Eaters opened fire on traders on Monday morning, he added.
"There is not a single male in Damasak. Boko Haram is in control because all males and soldiers have fled. No one expects women to fight them," Lawan told Agence La Belle France Presse by telephone from Abuja.
A local government official in Damasak said on Monday that the gunnies concealed their weapons in containers that they brought to the market.
They pretended to be traders but instead sprayed bullets through the market, said Mohammed Damasak.
"Sadly, the report we have is that the Boko Haram turbans have established their authority in Damasak. They have captured the town," said a senior security source in Maiduguri.
Usman Kalil, a senior local government official, said Boko Haram, which has seized more than two dozen towns in Borno and neighbouring Yobe and Adamawa states, had hoisted their flag.
"They have killed our people at will but I don't know how many people," he said.
"They also destroyed many buildings, including the market, a hospital and the secretariat. Many people, especially women and kiddies, are under the custody of the terrorists."
Boko Haram's territorial gains are a change in strategy from its previous trademark of deadly hit-and-run strikes or high-profile strikes against government, police or military targets.
The group wants to create a hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria ... a particularly crimson stretch of Islam's bloody border... and its seizure of towns has raised fears about a potential loss of government control in the region.
Lawan said he feared that Damasak may suffer the same fate as Malam Fatori, a nearby fishing hub which was overrun earlier this month.
"When Boko Haram seized Malam Fatori recently, the military kept giving us assurances that they were going to deploy and take it back," the senator added.
"But the town is still in the hands of the snuffies and not a single soldier has been deployed to fight them. Our concern is Damasak may not be any different."
Posted by: trailing wife ||
11/26/2014 00:00 ||
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[11126 views]
Top|| File under: Boko Haram
#1
is the nigerian army weak or corrupt?
Posted by: Paul D ||
11/26/2014 13:16 Comments ||
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[AnNahar] More than 45 people died Tuesday in twin kabooms, including one by a female jacket wallah, at a packed market in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri.
The kabooms in the Borno state capital targeted the same Monday Market area where at least 15 people died July 1 in blast blamed on the Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... murderous Moslem group.
Tuesday's attack came after the snuffies seized control of another town in Nigeria's restive northeast.
Health worker Dogara Shehu said he counted more than "45 people killed, some of them completely decapitated" in the Maiduguri blasts in an account supported by another witness.
An official with Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) confirmed that "many people have been killed" but did not have an official corpse count.
One senior police officer, who requested anonymity, described the kaboom, which happened at about 11:00 am (1000 GMT), as a "powerful bomb", which was felt across the city.
Market trader Usman Babaji told AFP the explosives were hidden in a motorized, three-wheeled rickshaw, which are popular throughout the country.
A second kaboom followed moments later as people rushed to the scene of the first bombing to help the injured, witnesses said.
Abubakar Bello, who sells chickens near the scene, said the woman was carrying explosives in a wrapper on her back, in the same way that babies are carried.
"She maneuvered her way to the scene of the earlier kaboom," he said in an account supported by three others.
"I think it was a deliberate plan to inflict much pain on unsuspecting people because the second kaboom went off after many people gathered at the scene of the first one."
Boko Haram will likely be blamed for the blasts, given that it has attacked Maiduguri dozens of times during its five-year fight to create a hardline Islamist state in northern Nigeria.
The Islamist group was founded in Maiduguri more than a decade ago and the city was once the epicenter of the conflict until its fighters were pushed out into more rural parts of the northeast.
Since May 2013, when a state of emergency was imposed in Borno and two neighboring states, violence has increased in the countryside, killing thousands and forcing many more to flee.
Boko Haram had earlier taken over the town of Damasak, in the far north of Borno near the border with neighboring Niger, starting their assault with an attack on the market there early Monday.
Many in recent weeks have warned that violence would return to Maiduguri and some have voiced concern that the Islamists might try to capture the key city.
Losing Maiduguri would be a huge blow for Nigeria's territorial integrity, but the military dismissed the warnings as alarmist.
Despite claims that they have since retaken a number of towns seized by the murderous Moslems, soldiers have largely been unable to halt Boko Haram attacks throughout the northeast.
[Ynet] Two female jacket wallahs blew themselves up Tuesday in a crowded market in Nigeria's northeastern city of Maiduguri, killing at least 30 people, according to witnesses and a security official.
The two teenage girls dressed in full hijab entered the busy market and detonated their explosives, said Abba Aji Kalli, the Borno state coordinator of the Civilian Joint Task Force.
The first set off her explosives and killed about three women, said Kalli.
When others gathered around the scene, the second bomber screamed and blew herself up, killing about 30, he said.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
11/26/2014 00:00 ||
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[11133 views]
Top|| File under: Boko Haram
#1
Anywhere in the world, this is all you need to know about women in hijab
Posted by: Bov Flimbers ||
11/26/2014 22:41 Comments ||
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[AnNahar] Dutch police have placed in durance vile Youse'll never take me alive coppers!... [BANG!]... Ow!... I quit! three men including an ex-jihadist fighter suspected of planning terror attacks and funding other fighters in Syria, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
The three men, two aged 26 and a third aged 30, were arrested in the southern Dutch cities of Eindhoven and Arnhem, the prosecutor's office said in a statement.
"They are suspected of preparing terror attacks and wanting to join the Al-Nusra ...the current nom de guerre of al-Qaeda in the Levant, which isn't to be confused with al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Levant... Front," Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, it said, but did not give further details.
One of the men is also suspected of giving money to jihadist fighters in Syria.
Prosecutors started their probe during the summer after receiving information from the Dutch security services (AIVD), said the statement.
Law enforcement officers raided the suspects' homes late last month in various cities and confiscated computers, tablets and mobile phones.
They also seized the men's passports as well as the passports of three other suspects.
Around 130 Dutch jihadists have left to fight in Syria, with 30 already having returned and 14 others killed in the fighting, according to the country's latest intelligence statistics.
[Ynet] Syrian government warplanes carried out a series of Arclight airstrikes Tuesday on the de-facto capital of the Death EaterIslamic 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.... group, killing at least 36 people, activists said.
The Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said some of the air raids struck a popular market near a museum and an industrial neighborhood in the city of Raqqa along the Euphrates River in northeastern Syria.
It put the corpse count at 36. The Local Coordination Committees said the strikes killed at least 50 people. Another Raqqa-based collective called Raqqa is Being Silently Slaughtered said it documented over 70 deaths. Such discrepancies are normal in the immediate aftermath of attacks in Syria.
A wave of Syrian regime air strikes on 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.... group's self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa, in the country's east, killed at least 63 people on Tuesday, among them 36 civilians, a monitor said.
"Among the 63 killed were at least 36 civilians. There were also 20 unidentified victims who could be civilians or jihadists, as well as the disfigured remains of at least seven other people," said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.
"Dozens more were maimed, some of them critically. We fear the corpse count may rise further," he told AFP.
The head of the Britannia-based monitoring group said previously that "most of the casualties were caused by two consecutive air strikes" on Raqqa's main industrial zone.
"The first strike came, residents rushed to rescue the maimed, and then the second raid took place," said Abdel Rahman, whose group relies on a network of sources on the ground in Syria for its information.
Amateur video footage distributed by activists in Raqqa showed several bloodied bodies laid out on a street near an apparent bombing site, as an ambulance rushed to the scene.
Aid workers in red overalls bearing the Red Islamic Thingy symbol could be seen placing the corpses into white body bags.
Activists from the city meanwhile denounced the raids as a "massacre."
The Islamic State organization emerged in Syria's war in spring 2013. It took over Raqqa, the only placid provincial capital to fall from government control since the outbreak of a 2011 revolt, and turned it into its bastion.
Most of the city's civil society activists, as well as rebel fighters who expelled Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad The Scourge of Hama... 's troops, have either been killed, kidnapped or forced to flee for other parts of Syria or neighboring Turkey.
For many months, Assad's regime only rarely targeted Raqqa city, apparently reserving most of its firepower for areas under rebel control.
But late this summer, the government intensified its air strikes against IS positions in northern and eastern Syria.
On September 6, 53 people were killed in air strikes on Raqqa, among them at least 31 civilians, according to the Observatory.
The US-led military coalition that has been carrying out air strikes against IS in Iraq and Syria has also targeted the jihadist group in Raqqa.
Activists say Raqqa's residents fear the government's strikes far more than those of the coalition because most of the casualties from the regime's attacks have been civilians.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
11/26/2014 00:00 ||
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[11127 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
#1
I live near SF. There is no anti-war activity currently or recently. I expect there will be none for the next two years. After that, depending on the election outcome, civilian lives will again become exceedingly precious again to all the local hippies. Currently they are focused mostly on hemp consumption, marriage issues, women's rights or immigration. Soon the pendulum will swing and the Cheney/Bush masks will be dusted off. It is sad when people heat or cool their espoused convictions based on petty politics.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
11/26/2014 12:27 Comments ||
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I s'pose that's a kinder death than some of the more imaginative methods employed in the region... Yes, we do know what some of them are; no, we do not wish to discuss it, as that level of cruelty makes me cry.
[AnNahar] 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.... group stoned two men to death in Syria Tuesday after claiming they were gay, a monitor said, in the jihadist organization's first executions for alleged homosexuality.
"The IS today stoned to death a man that it said was gay," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that the victim was around 20 years old.
He was killed in Mayadeen in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, near the border with Iraq.
The Britannia-based Observatory said IS claimed it found videos on his mobile phone showing him "practicing indecent acts with males".
In a separate incident on Tuesday, an 18-year-old was also stoned to death in Deir Ezzor city after the group said he was gay, the Observatory said.
Activists on social media said that the dead men were opponents of IS and that the group had used the allegation as a pretext to kill them.
The United Nations ...where theory meets practice and practice loses... said this month the IS had carried out several executions by stoning of women in Syria it accused of adultery.
The jihadists proclaimed a "caliphate" in June after seizing swathes of Iraq and Syria.
Activists say IS carries out regular public executions -- often beheadings -- in areas it controls.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
11/26/2014 00:00 ||
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[11126 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
#1
I'm sure our Social Justice Warriors will be right on that. /sarc off
#3
In order to stone someone I thought you had to have two or three witnesses. If I were a mullah, I might want to know what two or three people were doing watching a couple of guys have gay sex. It sounds like a potential opportunity for a secondary stoning that might make the whole stoning idea look less attractive to potential voyeurs. I guess the good news is there will surely be all sorts of stoning regulations put in place once the EU converts to Islam. At least rock shape, stone weight and throw distance will be tightly standardized.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
11/26/2014 14:31 Comments ||
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[AnNahar] The jihadist 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.... group on Tuesday said it beheaded a member of the minority Ismaili community, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, accusing him of "apostasy".
"Yesterday (Monday) the Islamic police in Homs province carried out the punishment for apostasy against on an Ismaili apostate... The punishment was carried out before a group of Moslems," IS said in a statement distributed on jihadist forums.
IS also distributed graphic photographs of the execution, including one showing the unnamed victim kneeling on the ground as a jihadist raises a sword above his head.
"This is what will happen to every apostate," read a handwritten sign placed above the shoulders of the victim's disfigured body.
The Ismaili community numbers some 200,000 people in Syria, where many live in Salamiyeh, a town in the central province of Hama.
IS considers all non-Sunnis to automatically be heretics and deserving of death, especially Shiites and Alawites, the sect to which Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad The Scourge of Hama... 's clan belongs.
The jihadist group also believes that Sunnis who do not subscribe to its extreme ideology are apostates.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
11/26/2014 00:00 ||
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[11129 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
#1
both heresy and apostasy used in this article
usually heresy is an unauthorized deviation from Islam while apostasy is a renunciation of Islam
usually heretics are to be killed without trial (e.g., the reward for the killing of Rushdie) while apostates are sometimes given a chance to return to the faith during trial
Posted by: lord garth ||
11/26/2014 0:20 Comments ||
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#2
Their caliphate resembles Voltaire's Paris.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
11/26/2014 0:54 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[AnNahar] A new air strike hit the Libyan capital's sole operational airport on Tuesday, a day after a raid claimed by forces loyal to a prominent anti-Islamist general, witnesses said.
[AnNahar] 
[AnNahar] More than 45 people died Tuesday in twin 
[Ynet] Two female 
[AnNahar] Dutch police have 
[AnNahar] The jihadist 
