As I recently edited my Christmas card mailing list, I find another not so very uplifting message on this special day. The meaning of Christmas and of life, something to ponder about our tiny speck of time nonetheless.
#2
Over thirty million dead Facebook users already? What will happen to their accounts when FB finally goes belly up? The information in the accounts is the property of Facebook, not of the users, so the accounts of the living will be a saleable asset, but those of the not recently deceased would only be of interest to a few statisticians and historians, and a few of the friends and relations. The rest will remember their loved ones without the aid of the internet, as people have always done.
I read a science fiction story a while back about a college computer class being given the task to purge the computer files of the dead. Each student was to go through their list, glean what was important from each file, and report back what they had discovered. The story, written before Facebook was a thing, was set several hundred years in the future.
[Al Jazeera] Hopes of a deal to end DR Congo's dangerous political crisis before Christmas were fast dissipating on Saturday after fruitless all-night talks over President Joseph Kabila's refusal to quit power.
Kabila's second and final five-year term ended on December 20, but he has shown no intention of leaving office soon, sparking violent protests that have left at least 40 people dead this week, according to the United Nations ...an organization which on balance has done more bad than good, with the good not done well and the bad done thoroughly... The influential Catholic Church has been brokering talks between the government and opposition and hopes rose this week of an imminent deal, with a draft seen by AFP news agency outlining plans for fresh elections at the end of next year, when Kabila would step down.
But that optimism has been slipping, and negotiators from the two camps left church offices in Kinshasa just before 5:30am local time without a deal to prevent a fresh descent into a new political crisis.
"The work is practically finished - the final touches are all that is left to do before the deal is signed," insisted Marcel Utembi, president of the Congo National Episcopal Conference (CENCO), who had pushed for a deal before Christmas.
But others indicated there was still a long way to go.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/25/2016 00:00 ||
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48 Hr Rule
A Russian passenger plane with 92 people aboard, including a famed military band on the way to Syria, crashed into the Black Sea on Sunday minutes after takeoff from the resort city of Sochi, the Defense ministry said. On its way to Syria
The Tu-154 that belonged to the Defense Ministry was carrying the famous Alexandrov choir for a concert at the Russian air base in Syria, the ministry said.
A total of 84 passengers and eight crew were on board the plane that dropped off radars minutes after taking off. Emergency services found its fragments about 1.5 kilometers (less than one mile) from shore at a depth of 50-70 meters (165-230 feet), the ministry said. There was no word of survivors.
Nine Russian journalists, including a TV crew from Channel One, were among the passengers.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was personally coordinating the rescue efforts, and President Vladimir Putin has received official reports on the incident.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/25/2016 07:21 ||
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#1
60 dead, including members of the Red Army Choir.
#3
No one to sing and play for the troops at Christmas. If we had leadership in Washington, an offer might have been extended to send the Marines. I suspect our bandsmen and women would have gladly volunteered. It is after all, Christmas.
#12
Look at it this way Bllossom. They likely needed to be replaced anyway. Especially the networking.
Personally I would have the entire WH network inspected - visually and electronically - and its key components replaced before I would conduct any government business in there. Who knows what was left behind. Treat the outgoing administration like they deserve - as the enemy.
[DAWN] The slaughtering of a goat at the Benazir Bhutto ... 11th Prime Minister of Pakistain in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996. She was the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistain People's Party, who was murdered at the instigation of General Ayub Khan. She was murdered in her turn by person or persons unknown while campaigning in late 2007. Suspects include, to note just a few, Baitullah Mehsud, General Pervez Musharraf, the ISI, al-Qaeda in Pakistain, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who shows remarkably little curiosity about who done her in... International Airport hanger before an ATR flight on Sunday has raised concerns among security officials about how a butcher’s knife was brought into the restricted zone.
Pakistain International Airlines (PIA) has also begun an investigation into how the butcher’s knife and a goat were brought to the airport’s hanger, a bigwig, requesting anonymity, said.
As news of the animal sacrifice before a PIA ATR-42 flight on Dec 18 went viral on social media, BBIA security personnel were also surprised that a knife was brought into the restricted area, where the entry of any individual and weapon is subject to security clearance.
A security bigshot said an investigation has been launched to ascertain how the black goat and the knife were brought to the airport hanger and security personnel who were on duty at the time will be questioned.
A goat was sacrificed for sadaqah was sacrificed close to the ATR-42 by PIA workers to offer prayers for the safety of the passengers on one of the airline’s planes given clearance to take off on Sunday. The first ATR-42 flight since the shakedown tests of the entire fleet later took off from Multan.
The management of the PIA has distanced itself from the goat’s slaughter, and spokesperson Danyal Gillani said the act was done by local employees as a gesture of gratitude after the first ATR plane was cleared. He added that the animal was killed several hours before the flight was operated.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/25/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
Pakistain International Airlines (PIA) has also begun an investigation into how the butcher’s knife and a goat were brought to the airport’s hanger
"The goat? Oh, that's my date"
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/25/2016 7:27 Comments ||
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#2
"And the butcher knife? You'll see, INFIDEL!"
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/25/2016 9:44 Comments ||
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[DAWN] The Karakoram Highway was opened for traffic on Saturday after an hours long suspension following protests by locals over the alleged murder of a local by a Frontier Constabulary (FC) official.
As per the demand of the protesters, the accused FC official was handed over to the local police and an FIR was registered against him.
Negotiations between a senior FC official and the Kohistan ...a backwoods district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa distinguished by being even more rustic than is the norm among the local Pashtuns.... assistant commissioner as well as the area deputy superintendent led to the arrest of the accused.
Earlier, one person was rubbed out in Kohistan following an argument between FC personnel and locals over the alleged assault of a taxi driver by FC men on Saturday.
Station House Officer (SHO) Dasu Muhammad Haq Hashmi had told Dawn an argument erupted between FC personnel and a taxi driver when the taxi hit a passing FC convoy conducting a routine patrol on the Karakoram Highway.
According to the SHO, FC men got out of their car and beat up the taxi driver, after which locals gathered at the spot and engaged in a heated exchange with the FC personnel.
The FC men began gun sex in order to disperse the crowd, the police official said. When they were unsuccessful in doing so, they opened fire on the crowd, he claimed. As a result of the firing, a 23-year-old local, Farooq, received bullet injuries and died.
A resident of the area, Alam Zeb, while speaking to Dawn alleged that the FC personnel had opened fire on civilians who were demanding the arrest of the FC constables involved in the alleged assault.
Another resident, trader Gul Shahzada, told Dawn that Farooq was employed in a bank as an office boy. Shahzada said he himself was not among the protesters, but ran to save his life when the firing began.
Locals had blocked the Karakoram Highway to protest the killing of Farooq and were chanting slogans against FC personnel.
The Karakoram Highway is a major trade route which is part of the China-Pakistain Economic Corridor and the protest has impacted the flow of traffic.
A photo of bullet shells at the site of the protest. ─ Photo by author.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/25/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
The knights trace their history to the 11th-century Crusades with the establishment of an infirmary in Jerusalem that cared for people of all faiths making pilgrimages to the Holy Land. It now counts 13,500 members and 100,000 staff and volunteers who provide health care in hospitals and clinics around the world and respond to war zones and natural disasters.
Indeed a major crack in the Church with that many dissenters.
#3
They know to keep the church at arms length, the don't want another Friday the 13th in their future...
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
12/25/2016 16:07 Comments ||
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From the link: "Francis on Thursday appointed a five-member commission to investigate the Dec. 8 ouster of Albrecht von Boeselager amid evidence that Francis' own envoy to the group, conservative Cardinal Raymond Burke, helped engineer it without his blessing.
One charge used against von Boeselager concerned a program that the order's Malteser International aid group had participated in several years ago with other aid groups to help sex slaves in Myanmar, including giving them condoms to protect them from HIV infection.
Church teaching bars the use of artificial contraception. Von Boeselager has said as soon as the order's headquarters in Rome learned of the condom distribution, two of the projects were immediately halted. A third continued, he said, because an abrupt end to the project would have deprived a poor region of Myanmar of all basic medical services. The project eventually ended after the Vatican's doctrine office intervened."
Moscow (AFP) - A Russian military plane headed to Syria has disappeared from radar after taking off from the southern city of Adler, local news agencies reported the defence ministry as saying Sunday.
The ministry said that there are 91 people onboard and that search and rescue groups had been dispatched to locate the missing Tu-154.
The plane had departed at 5:40 am local time (0240 GMT) from Adler, south of the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, and was conducting a routine flight to Russia's Hmeimim airbase outside the coastal Syrian city of Latakia, the ministry said.
The ministry said the plane was carrying Russian servicemen as well as members of the Alexandrov Ensemble, the army's official musical group, who were headed to Syria to participate in New Year celebrations at the base.
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.
