[Townhall] One of the most disgusting things to come out of the Obama administration was "Operation Fast and Furious," where members of the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) allowed illegal gun sales to go through ‐ commonly referred to as "gun walking" ‐ in order to track buyers and sellers they believed were connected to the Mexican drug cartels. Nearly 2,000 firearms were sold and were eventually found throughout the United States and Mexico. Two of them were used to kill Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
According to the New York Daily News, Brooklyn prosecutors are doing everything in their power to keep any questions relating to "Fast and Furious" from being mentioned during witness testimony. In fact, they're asking a federal judge to block defense attorneys from asking questions relating to the highly-publicized botched campaign.
"The defense strategy is transparent. Given the substantial number of articles that have been written about the Operation, many of which criticize the government’s handling of the movement of weapons from the United States into Mexico, the defense is attempting to use the well-known operation to place the government on trial," United States Attorney Richard Donoghue said in a letter to the court. "While the government will seek to introduce at trial seized weapons that had been identified by ATF agents within the scope of the Operation, any details about the Operation itself are completely irrelevant to the issues at trial under Rule 401 of the Federal Rules of Evidence and should be excluded on those grounds alone."
Judge Brian Cogan has yet to rule on the request.
According to witness testimony from former trafficker Tirso Martinez Sanchez, he ran El Chapo's train operation from 2000 to 2003 and made roughly $20 million. During that time, trains would pull into special warehouses in Mexico. Workers would fill hidden compartments with kilos of cocaine and then add oil to the train to throw off bomb-sniffing dogs at the border. This technique also discouraged border patrol agents from conducting physical searches.
Sanchez estimated that between 30 and 50 tons of cocaine, with a value of upwards of $800 million, was smuggled into the United States. Between seven to eight shipments a day made their way on the train lines to New York City.
The trains would drop off the smuggled drugs at a warehouse in New Jersey. Trucks would then come to transport the drugs to various distribution locations between Queens and Brooklyn.
#1
Yeah, it's be a shame if Holder was called to testify and wound up in contempt of US District Court as opposed to contempt of Congress (hehe)
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/24/2018 10:21 Comments ||
Top||
#2
No sense tipping over El Chapo - Klingon working arrangement rocks. If El Chapo doesn't say anything, the foreign accounts will not be disturbed. He'd want it that way.
Nothing shall tarnish the image of the first entitlement president.
[CBS] After 111 hours stranded underground, three people who went missing in a West Virginia coalmine are now recovering in a hospital after rescuers located them on Wednesday. A fourth person who emerged from the mine on Monday helped find the other three.
According to police, the group went into the mine to steal copper wiring and could face criminal charges. One of the searchers told CBS News' Chip Reid the rescue mission could cost as much as $1 million.
Emergency workers raced around the clock for four days to find Cody Beverly, Erica Treadway, and Kayla Williams, searching deep into the Whitesville, West Virginia, mine while the percentages on their oxygen detection gauges neared deadly levels.
Entering the mine ‐ which had been inactive for two years ‐ was not easy. Rescuers had to remove water at one entrance and bulldozed a new road outside the other. They used fans to help pump in air. Four thousand feet underground in the mine, rescuers said they reached Treadway first at 6 p.m. then Williams and Beverly 30 minutes later. All three walked out on their own.
Friends and family were jubilant during the reunion Wednesday night
[Daily Mail, Where America Gets Its News] Joel Fedd was arrested after he moved into a $500k home bought by a family
Fedd and his nephew posted footage of them walking around the house claiming the owned the land because they were 'Moorish American'
Fedd said he had a right to the property because he was an indigenous Moor and announced that 'we are taking the land back!'
He moved into the house during the week, changed the locks on the doors and put signs on the window saying: 'Do not trespass'
Fedd, 33, was later arrested by police and charged with criminal trespass
WHO ARE 'INDIGENOUS MOORS'?
The Moorish sovereign citizens political movement emerged in the mid-1990s on the East Coast based off the teachings of the Moorish Science Temple, a religious sect dating back to 1913.
MST’s founder Noble Drew Ali taught that black ’Moors’ were America’s original inhabitants and were therefore entitled to self-governing status.
He believed that all African Americans were descendants of the Moabites and are therefore Moorish.
Some Islamic historians believe that the Moors and Moslem groups reached the Americas before Christopher Columbus.
Moorish sovereigns believe this entitles them to claim immunity from federal, state, and local laws and can sometimes cite God’s law or common law over constitutional authority.
They come into conflict with federal and state authorities over their refusal to obey laws and government regulations.
Wikipedia has a fascinating article about the Moorish Science Temple movement, from which the Indigenous Moors and the Nation of Islam are both heretical spinoffs.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/24/2018 00:00 ||
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Link ||
[11127 views]
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#1
Criminals and thugs with religious trappings. Kind of like IS/Daesh but not as brutal - yet.
Posted by: John Smith ||
12/24/2018 5:55 Comments ||
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#4
One of my accounting professors used to have a realty company. He said when they started, they would follow all the legal was to deal with squatters which was expensive and time consuming and they'd always cause a lot of damage before leaving.
Fed up, he discovered the best way was Hired Goons. If he showed up with a pair of lumbering teamsters and just told them "Get out....now." They left with no fuss and no trouble. Way cheaper.
#6
If one claims a different sovereignty that doesn't mean you are immune to laws, that means you can appeal to that other sovereignty for help when you break laws. Since their other sovereignty is fictional a disreputable nation could literally do anything they wanted to these fools until with no legitimate government to complain about it.
Be a hero to your kids, grandkids, and all sorts of significant others: click on the Santa tracker to watch as Santa Claus delivers presents all over the world
#2
And to you, Angusoger Black3374, and to all Rantburgers both visible and lurking. If Santa consults me, your name will be on the Nice list in big letters.
[American Thinker] It had to happen. As we suspected would happen.
The caravan migrants, still cooling their heels out of sight of tourists in an isolated redoubt of Tijuana, in line awaiting for their U.S. asylum claims to be adjudicated, have finally turned on their rabidly left-wing organizers, namely, Pueblo Sin Fronteras.
The Associated Press has a pretty good report about the scope of the migrant disgust:
Thousands are now in Tijuana on the U.S. border, where they are likely to be camped for months or longer with no easy way to get into the United States, creating what is fast becoming a humanitarian crisis in this overwhelmed city.
Many blame Pueblo Sin Fronteras, or People Without Borders, made up of about 40 U.S. and Mexican activists.
Critics, including former allies and some of the migrants themselves, say Pueblo Sin Fronteras downplayed the dangers of such treks, especially for families and small children, and misled the participants about how long they would have to wait on the Mexican side to apply for asylum.
They were Chavistas, and as Chavistas, they were offering up the big goody-style free-stuff packages, except that they wanted Uncle Sam, not Hugo's oil money, to pay for them. When that fell through and the migrants ran into a U.S. president with a serious interest in border laws meaning what they said they mean, they got left high and dry, as stiffed on the promises as Venezuela's fleeing refugees are. The goody pot never materialized, though it might for some of them as they wait their turns in line. With 90% of the migrant caravan composed of military- and gang-aged young men, don't hold your breath.
What's more, the migrants are not only angry at the Pueblo Sin Fronteras for its false promises of easy entry at the U.S. border, encouraging that (and AP does not let them off the hook, either it clearly pins the sponsorship role this group played, naming thing after thing that they did to prove it) they are also angry that the mysteriously funded NGO apparently discouraged them from taking Mexico up on its generous offer of school, jobs and legal status in Mexico's near-to-home southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca, where labor shortages abound and jobs are there to be filled, all in a similar culture to Central America's nations. Migrants could get a leg up pretty quickly with neither enhanced education nor a language change necessary in those places and crime is not bad there, either, either by Mexican state comparisons, or especially, as compared to Central America. The Mexican offer really was generous and according to AP, they seem to have run up against an expiration date, courtesy of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, whose project, of course, really has been political.
We know the migrants have turned on the organizers because suddenly, they are nowhere to be found in Tijuana. Some are still talking for the cameras, but the Tijuana mayor says he wants them behind bars for their crummy little stunt (which has cost Tijuana a lot of money) and Pueblo Sin Fronteras itself says it no longer wants to sponsor any more caravans. Good riddance. But, not to celebrate or anything, they say they will pursue their open-borders agenda by other means, which will probably be left-wing lawyers in the states.
The fact remains, though, that their name stinks among the migrant community, and word among that group has a way of getting around. The reverberations should be strong for that, while questions are more than necessary here about who funds them - that's a question that shouldn't go away. But for now, nice to see at least some of their caravan pawns and camera-fodder moms-and-kids getting angry. Frankly, after that particular stunt, they have a right to be.
Venezuela’s navy on Saturday "intercepted" a ship exploring for oil on behalf of Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) in Guyanese waters, neighboring Guyana’s foreign ministry said in a statement, in the latest incident in a century-old border dispute. A series of offshore oil discoveries in recent years have given Guyana the potential to become one of Latin America’s largest producers. In OPEC member Venezuela, by contrast, crude output has tumbled to its lowest levels in nearly 70 years amid an economic crisis.
The Ramform Tethys vessel, which belongs to Norwegian company Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS) and was conducting seismic survey work on behalf of Exxon, stopped exploration and turned east after being approached by the Venezuelan navy, PGS spokesman Bard Stenberg said in a statement.
"Guyana rejects this illegal, aggressive and hostile act," Guyana’s foreign ministry said in a late Saturday statement, adding that the move "demonstrates the real threat to Guyana’s economic development by its western neighbor" and "violates the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our country."
The ministry added that it would report the incident to the United Nations and send formal communication to Venezuela’s government. It said it would inform the governments of the various homelands of the 70 crew members aboard the vessel, flagged by the Bahamas, of the "threat to their safety."
An Exxon spokeswoman said seismic explorations in the western portion of Guyana’s Stabroek Block "have been paused until they can be safely continued," and that the vessel was operating in Guyana’s exclusive economic zone.
Venezuela’s Information Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Russian fighter jets land in Crimea amid tensions
Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolas Maduro has previously criticized Guyana’s decision to allow oil exploration to go ahead in the waters off the shore of the Essequibo region, a sparsely populated and dense jungle area equivalent to around two-thirds of Guyanese territory that Venezuela also claims.
Guyana says Caracas agreed to relinquish the area after a ruling by an international tribunal in 1899, but Venezuela later backtracked on that decision. The United Nations earlier this year referred the dispute to the International Court of Justice, a move welcomed by Georgetown but criticized by Caracas.
The dispute has heated up in recent years as Exxon has announced the discovery of more than 4 billion barrels of oil off the shore of Guyana, an English-speaking nation of 750,000 with no history of oil production.
The latest incident comes less than a day after Guyana’s parliament toppled the current government in a no-confidence vote, paving the way for elections in three months.
#4
Russia needs to do something to keep the price of oil elevated, and if it costs Venezuelan lives, well, their self-determination is mainly fictional right now anyway.
#5
Venezuala has "territorial claims" on a large chunk of Guyana...Guayana Esequiba. This bleeds over into offshore claims. The inhabitants of Guayana have every reason to be nervous about their neighbor.
[SA Today] A rescue team had to suspend its descent to recover workers who remain blocked in a mine in the Russian city of Solikamsk, the Perm Territory, while being just 10 meters (33 feet) away from their probable location due to high temperature and smoke, the commander of a paramilitary rescue squad said Saturday.
"During the fifth descent, mine rescuers ‐ due to temperature and gas conditions ‐ could not move to the canopy, where people are presumably located, being just 10 meters away," Alexey Pestov said.
Later, the rescues began the sixth attempt to recover the miners, spokeswoman for the Perm Territory’s government Daria Levchenko told Sputnik.
According to Levchenko, little hope has been left of the possibility that the miners would be found alive.
[Yahoo] Russia said on Saturday that the scrapping of a Cold War era nuclear pact may lead to an arms race and direct confrontation between several global regions, after a proposal by Moscow was rejected in a United Nations vote.
Moscow had put forward a resolution in support of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) which bans Moscow and Washington from stationing short- and intermediate-range, land-based missiles in Europe.
Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement that the UN had failed to vote in favor of the proposal.
"A new blow has been dealt on the global architecture of security and stability. Now, with the collapse of the INF treaty, several global regions could be plunged into the arms race or even into a direct confrontation," it said.
Washington has threatened to pull out of the accord, saying Moscow failed to comply with it.
On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States of raising the risk of nuclear war by threatening to spurn the key arms control treaty and refusing to hold talks about another pact that expires soon. And while we are distracted by a Government "Shutdown," The Great Russian Collusion®, Strippers and Playmates and Bears (Oh my!), Schumer, etal, may be risking Capital that makes $5B ("The Wall of Ineffectiveness, Costliness and Immorality") look like the ashen remains of chicken seed chaff.
Better to spend your money on getting the Euros to really really p*** off the Americans as to pull their expensive military welfare from the continent. Shouldn't take too much effort.
[PRESSTV] The United States is planning to add Ukraine into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (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... ) as part of its plan to encircle Russia, an American political analyst says.
Keith Preston, director of the Attackthesystem.com, made the remarks while discussing Washington’s decision to provide an additional $10 million in military aid to Ukraine.
Announcing the decision on Friday, the US State Department said the money would be used to boost its naval capability, after Russia seized three Ukrainian navy ships off the coast of Crimea in the Sea of Azov last month.
The Sea of Azov is a strategic ocean route linked to the Black Sea by the narrow Strait of Kerch where Russia has built a bridge to link the Crimean Peninsula with the mainland.
Tensions escalated earlier this year after Ukraine detained two Russian ships for port calls on Crimea, which rejoined Russia in a 2014 referendum.
The move prompted Russia to increase patrols off its Azov coast to guarantee free navigation by Russian ships.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/24/2018 00:00 ||
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[11127 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
From Attackthesystem.com. It must be serious !!! /sarc.
[AnNahar] French President Emmanuel Macron called for "order" on Sunday after a sixth weekend of "yellow vest" anti-government protests marked by dwindling participation and a violent attack on police in Gay Paree.
Speaking during a visit to the central African state of Chad where he was visiting French troops serving in a counter-terrorism force Macron said: "There must be order now, calm and harmony. Our country needs it."
"It needs harmony, unity, sincere commitment to strong collective causes and we must heal the divisions," said the 41-year-old centrist, who has struggled to tamp down the anger of the working poor in smalltown and rural La Belle France over falling spending power and policies seen as tilted towards the rich.
Continued on Page 49
[DAWN] 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.... Food Authority (PFA) on Saturday declared 47 brands of ice cream and frozen desserts unfit for human consumption.
The authority has released the sample results of 156 brands of ice cream and frozen desserts and 47 of them failed to meet the standards of Punjab Pure Food Regulations. The samples were collected in September 2018.
PFA Director General Muhammad Usman said: "The list of the sample results is available on the website (www.pfa.gop.pk) and anybody can download it."
The PFA also ordered to stop the production of all those brands that failed to meet the standards in lab test. The authority would again collect samples for laboratory test after ensuring proper reforms.
According to schedule, ice cream, juice nectar (drink), fruits-made beverages, edible ghee and oil products will be checked four times in a year. Tap water of Wasa, carbonated beverages, meat-made items, sauce, squash, fruits and vegetables (canned) will be checked twice a year. Apart from this, vinegar, pickles and malted beverages will be checked once a year.
Meanwhile, ...back at the desert island, Bert was realizing to his horror that he'd had only one bottle for one message, and he'd forgotten to include a return address... the PFA’s vigilance cell and meat safety teams closed four beef shops and seized 1,300kg meat of emaciated and ill animals in different areas of the city.The teams seized 450kg meat from Hajveri Beef Shop, 400kg from Jillani Beef Shop, 300kg from Numan Beef Shop and 150kg from Shahzad Beef Shop. All the [confiscated] stuff was sent to Punjab Agriculture and Meat Company for disposal.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/24/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11131 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
Back in my 70s stint in Italy, the commissary stocked Finish butter and Austrian milk and ice cream because the 'local' stuff couldn't pass inspection. Our beef came from Yugoslavia for the same reason.
[DAWN] In some of Quetta's suburbs, 40 to 65 per cent of children aged between six months and five years are suffering from severe acute malnutrition. This was revealed by a nutrition officer from Unicef, Dr Faisal, while talking to DawnNewsTV on Sunday.
"The worst areas are Quetta's Panjpai tehsil and Kahan in terms of undernourishment," he said.
Unicef and Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... government's health department conducted a joint screening in Quetta, Pishin and Killa Abdullah districts of the province. Over 2,500 teams were formed to screen children from December 5 to 8, according to Dr Sher Ahmed Satakzai, the provincial coordinator for Balochistan's lady health workers programme.
World Health Organisation principles dictate that an emergency be declared when the number of malnourished children reaches 15pc, Dr Faisal said.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/24/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11138 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
So in "the land of the pure (BS)" hungry chilluns is Allan's will...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/24/2018 17:40 Comments ||
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WASHINGTON (AP) ‐ Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is up and working as she recuperates from cancer surgery.
A spokeswoman for the court, Kathy Arberg, also says that Ginsburg remained in New York at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center on Sunday. No information has been released on when Ginsburg might return home.
Ginsburg underwent surgery Friday to remove two malignant growths in her left lung. Doctors say there is no evidence of any remaining disease.
Now 85, the justice has been treated for cancer two other times. Last month she cracked three ribs in a fall at the court.
The court next meets on Jan. 7. Despite her health problems, Ginsburg has never missed arguments.
[DailyCaller] As 2018 comes to a close, it’s time to review the year’s worst cases of media misquotes, misleading narratives, major corrections and straight-up fake news.
While last year’s fake reporting largely occurred during the media’s relentless pursuit to prove Russian collusion, this year’s list is much more varied. However, some themes emerged: stories about then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and the U.S. border were routinely flagged for misinformation.
Without further ado, here is the list of 2018’s worst examples of fake news: Hit the link.
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.
[Townhall] One of the most disgusting things to come out of the Obama administration was "Operation Fast and Furious," where members of the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) allowed illegal gun sales to go through ‐ commonly referred to as "gun walking" ‐ in order to track buyers and sellers they believed were connected to the Mexican drug cartels. Nearly 2,000 firearms were sold and were eventually found throughout the United States and Mexico. Two of them were used to kill Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. 
[American Thinker] It had to happen. As we suspected would happen.
[PRESSTV] The United States is planning to add Ukraine into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (
[DAWN] The
WASHINGTON (AP) ‐ Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is up and working as she recuperates from cancer surgery.
