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Area: WoT Operations    WoT Background    Opinion        Politix   
Report: Syria mistakenly downs Russian plane as it attempts to repel alleged Israeli strike
Today's Headlines
Headline Comments [Views]
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Page 6: Politix
27 22:58 European Conservative [5]
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8 14:58 Moe Free Schitt [2]
-Lurid Crime Tales-
Waffle House Robber Gets Shot By Armed Customer, Drops BB Gun
[Bearing Arms] Being a customer in a business being robbed is pretty scary. When you’re armed, it takes on an added dimension, though. A thousand questions likely run through your mind, including the possibility of what happens if you don’t draw and fire your weapon. It doesn’t mean you don’t act, necessarily, but it may well play a role in your head before acting.

One question you don’t have the luxury of getting answered first, even if you have time to think it, is whether the gun is a firearm or a BB gun.

In a Georgia Waffle House over the weekend, an armed citizen acted to stop an armed robbery. The suspect’s weapon was, well, suspect.

Now, it becomes easy for people to sit here after the fact and lament the fact that someone was shot for having a BB gun, but that’s not what happened.

This person was shot because he was trying to threaten and bully his way into the cash register of a business that earned that money. The fact that it was a BB gun and not a real firearm is irrelevant. No one knew that when the citizen acted, and no one can blame him for assuming that it was a real gun.

After all, the criminal in question banked on people believe it to be a real firearm. That was his purpose in taking it into the restaurant in the first place. He wanted people to think he was armed.

And they did.
Posted by: Besoeker || 09/18/2018 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Hey, BBs sting!
Posted by: Skidmark || 09/18/2018 1:17 Comments || Top||

#2  "Shoot him enough to keep him from moving."
Posted by: Bugs Thud4877 || 09/18/2018 3:14 Comments || Top||

#3  there's a lesson somewhere about bringing a bb gun to a gun fight.

Al
Posted by: Frozen Al || 09/18/2018 11:09 Comments || Top||


-Short Attention Span Theater-
Yusaku Maezawa will be first SpaceX BFR private passenger around the Moon.
[Twitter]
Elon Musk:Yusaku will be bringing 8 (brave) artists & cultural figures with him on the journey around the moon!



Posted by: 3dc || 09/18/2018 00:26 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  But can they build a CO2 scrubber with a notebook and duct tape?
Posted by: Bugs Stalin6286 || 09/18/2018 10:29 Comments || Top||


'Inside Edition' crew gets robbed while reporting on San Francisco Bay Area crime
Posted by: Skidmark || 09/18/2018 00:46 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  The poor darlings.
Posted by: trailing wife || 09/18/2018 1:03 Comments || Top||

#2  Fisking themselves:: "We deserved it as oppressors"
Posted by: Frank G || 09/18/2018 7:34 Comments || Top||

#3  That's one way to become familiar with the subject.
Posted by: Raj || 09/18/2018 8:32 Comments || Top||

#4  An astonishing development in our 'so-called' modern society. This could easily become the theme of an action figure television series.
Posted by: Besoeker || 09/18/2018 8:37 Comments || Top||

#5  No descriptions or pictures of robbers to help track them down?

SF "police" don't have the excuse britpol have that they are too busy tracking down online wrongspeak.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 09/18/2018 9:16 Comments || Top||

#6  San Fran is definitely on its way to a dystopian cyber-punk future.
Posted by: DarthVader || 09/18/2018 9:22 Comments || Top||

#7  "No descriptions or pictures of robbers to help track them down?"

What makes you think they will be prosecuted?
Posted by: newc || 09/18/2018 14:01 Comments || Top||

#8  Did they crap their pants? Cause, you know, its OK there.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 09/18/2018 16:44 Comments || Top||

#9  ^ Though not yet mandatory.
Posted by: Lionel Poodle8771 || 09/18/2018 17:46 Comments || Top||

#10  "Just think of it as Evolution in action..."
Posted by: magpie || 09/18/2018 19:33 Comments || Top||


Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
Registrations for elections in Donetsk set for next Friday


The Donetsk council of ministers have chosen September 22nd to begin registration for candidates of elective office, according to data supplied by the pro Russian website Russkaya Vesna.

Elections for the post of president and members of the legislative body will take place November 11th.

The last time elections were held in Donetsk was four years ago, in the height of fighting between Russian backed separatists and the Ukrainian government.

The elections take in the way of the death of Donetsk president Aleksandr Zakharchenko last August 31st. He was killed in a bombig attack at a cafe in Donetsk city.

Posted by: badanov || 09/18/2018 00:00 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:


Cyber
Linux Goes SJW, Adopts "Code of Conduct". We All Know How This Ends
Posted by: charger || 09/18/2018 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  age, body size, disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.

None of this shit has anything to do with building software. The quality of your code or the completeness of your design does not depend on how fat you are or who/what you like to boink. This is one of those engineering domains where there are objective standards of good and bad that have nothing to do with anyone's feelings.

The Python (a computer language) community just had a dust-up over whether the engineering terms "master" and "slave" were offensive.
Prediction: some high-profile member of the Linux community will be driven out by a mob in the next few months.

“Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners.”
-- comedian George Carlin
Posted by: SteveS || 09/18/2018 1:29 Comments || Top||

#2  An organization can have one central mission. As soon as it has two, both will suffer.
Posted by: M. Murcek || 09/18/2018 6:56 Comments || Top||

#3  SteveS -- Linus *is* a high-ranking member of the community. Now, from what I've heard, he does need to work on his communication skills, or get some distance between himself and the OS he's been working on for over 25 years. The biggest question is whether he will return to the project or find something new to work on.

But, yeah, generally this crap is going overboard. The SJWs are demanding to be treated as equals, then complaining when they don't perform as equals and are called out on it. The bizarre attacks on terminology are just muscle-flexing -- how much power do they have? Is it enough to control the language yet?
Posted by: Rob Crawford || 09/18/2018 7:35 Comments || Top||

#4  I don't think the people driving the narrative will allow for taking indoctrination training before the fact as insurance against being called out later.
Posted by: M. Murcek || 09/18/2018 7:54 Comments || Top||

#5  notice that under the code you can still harass conservatives, Republicans and Libertarians
Posted by: lord garth || 09/18/2018 11:43 Comments || Top||

#6  Prediction: some high-profile member of the Linux community will be driven out by a mob in the next few months.

Fortunately there's no institution that is in control of the Linux kernel.

Those who will be driven out (and that's certainly going to happen) can freely modify and distribute the kernel under the GPL.

I predict a fork as the LKML goes dysfunctional. The Linux kernel will survive.
Posted by: Elmerert Hupens2660 || 09/18/2018 15:44 Comments || Top||

#7  For fellow not so geeky (or not so up-to-date) readers, the tragicomic context omitted by ZDnet:

This new code is based on the Contributor Covenant. This open-source code of conduct is already being used by such projects as Eclipse, Kubernetes, and Rails. It was created by Coraline Ada Ehmke, a software developer and open-source advocate.
Posted by: Zenobia Floger6220 || 09/18/2018 15:55 Comments || Top||

#8  Linus *is* a high-ranking member of the community

Linus *created* Linux, put it in the public domain, and created the Linux community. So yeah ... 'high-ranking member'.
Posted by: Snoluting Phomoth8901 || 09/18/2018 16:03 Comments || Top||


Google Dragonfly links phone numbers to search results
[The Intercept] GOOGLE BUILT A prototype of a censored search engine for China that links users’ searches to their personal phone numbers, thus making it easier for the Chinese government to monitor people’s queries, The Intercept can reveal.

The search engine, codenamed Dragonfly, was designed for Android devices, and would remove content deemed sensitive by China’s ruling Communist Party regime, such as information about political dissidents, free speech, democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest.

Previously undisclosed details about the plan, obtained by The Intercept on Friday, show that Google compiled a censorship blacklist that included terms such as “human rights,” “student protest,” and “Nobel Prize” in Mandarin.

Leading human rights groups have criticized Dragonfly, saying that it could result in the company “directly contributing to, or [becoming] complicit in, human rights violations.” A central concern expressed by the groups is that, beyond the censorship, user data stored by Google on the Chinese mainland could be accessible to Chinese authorities, who routinely target political activists and journalists.
Posted by: Skidmark || 09/18/2018 00:00 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Related: Senior Google Scientist Resigns Over Dragonfly
Posted by: Bobby || 09/18/2018 8:22 Comments || Top||

#2  Surely there must be some digital method of sorting the living from the dead.
Posted by: Besoeker || 09/18/2018 8:29 Comments || Top||

#3  Check the voter registrations.
Posted by: Skidmark || 09/18/2018 22:39 Comments || Top||


Europe
Anarchists Attack Iran Embassy in Athens
[AnNahar] An anarchist group attacked the Iranian embassy in Athens early Monday, smashing windows and throwing red paint into the courtyard in protest at Tehran's treatment of its Kurdish population, police said.

"The attack was claimed by the Rubicon group," a police official told AFP, adding that no arrests had yet been made.

The attack was carried out by about 10 members of the group at about 0300 GMT who, armed with iron bars, took the guard by surprise and then smashed windows in the waiting room.

Nobody was hurt in the incident, police said.

In a statement on the internet, the Rubicon group claimed the attack as a gesture of solidarity with the "Kurds of Iran".

The Rubicon group has carried out a series of similar attacks in recent years, targeting embassies, companies and public buildings, causing damage but no injuries.

In August, members of the group burst into the Austrian embassy, protesting against Vienna's plans to extend the working day.
Posted by: trailing wife || 09/18/2018 00:00 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Iran

#1  And the French were slow to respond.
Posted by: Skidmark || 09/18/2018 1:04 Comments || Top||

#2  "Anarchists" really?
Posted by: Seeking Cure For Ignorance || 09/18/2018 10:08 Comments || Top||


The Grand Turk
Erdogan Says Turkey Will Increase Troop Numbers in Cyprus
Sultans gotta sultan.
[AnNahar] Ottoman Turkish President 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...
has vowed that Ankara will increase rather than reduce its troops numbers in Cyprus, a move that could further set back attempts to reunify the divided Mediterranean island.

In comments published in Ottoman Turkish media Monday, Erdogan added that The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...just another cheapjack Moslem dictatorship, brought to you by the Moslem Brüderbund....
had no need for a naval base on Cyprus as mooted in some reports but could establish such a facility if it was necessary from a "psychological" point of view.

"No, we are not going to reduce the numbers of our troops. We will increase them, we are not going to decrease them," he told Ottoman Turkish news hounds traveling back with him from a trip to Azerbaijan.

He expressed impatience over the Cyprus issue, saying "this business would have been solved" if the Greek Cypriots had backed unification in an April 2004 referendum on a plan put forward by the late former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan
...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo...
While Ottoman Turkish Cypriots were overwhelmingly in favour of the plan, Greek Cypriots voted against.

"Henceforth we will implement the formula that we have declared for ourselves," said Erdogan, without elaborating.

Cyprus has been divided since the 1974 Ottoman Turkish invasion which occupied the northern third of the island in response to a Greek military junta-sponsored coup.

Turkey is believed to maintain around 35,000 troops in northern Cyprus, although the military does not give official figures.

The withdrawal -- or drastic reduction -- of Turkey's military presence is seen as key to any reunification plan being acceptable to the Greek Cypriot side.

Some conservative Ottoman Turkish media have also reported in recent weeks that Turkey was planning to open a naval base on Cyprus, a move that would likely deal a terminal blow to any reunification hopes.

But Erdogan said "we have no need to build a base there," noting that unlike Greece, Turkey was just "minutes away" from the coast of Cyprus.

But he appeared to leave the door open to such a move as a way of making a political statement.

"This issue just has a psychological dimension. In this respect, if we felt the need, we could establish a base. Our presence there is important," Erdogan said.

There were high hopes at the beginning of 2017 that U.N.-backed talks could clinch a breakthrough in the long-running stalemate on reuniting the island.

But the deadlock has not been broken and analysts say rapid progress is unlikely for the moment as Erdogan reaches out to the nationalist electorate in Turkey.
Posted by: trailing wife || 09/18/2018 00:00 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under: Sublime Porte

#1  Ah, the old Roman design, move unreliable legions to the frontiers away from Rome.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 09/18/2018 7:29 Comments || Top||

#2  Better beaches.
Posted by: Skidmark || 09/18/2018 22:38 Comments || Top||


Iraq
River water levels decline by half in Iraq’s Anbar: official
Anbar (IraqiNews.com) Water levels at the Euphrates River in Iraq’s Anbar have declined by a half due to a reduced release from Syria, an Iraqi official was quoted saying on Monday as Iraqi provinces continue to feel a growing threat of water scarcity.
With brotherly Arab friends like these...
Manawer Abd al-Dulaimi, head of the water resources department at the city of Fallujah,
... the City of Mosques, which might have somthing to do with why it's not called Center of Prosperity or a really nice place to raise your kids...
told Almaalomah website that water releases from the Syrian side have declined from 500 Sqm/hour to a half of that amount.

He said Euphrates River levels dropped by 50%, warning that the situation threatens availability of water for farmers and other citizens. Dualimi attributed the decline to high temperatures, shortage of water at reservoirs and human infringements on the river.

The official urged to rehabilitate dilapidated water facilities and to ration consumption as means to counter the problem.

Water shortages have ignited deadly protests at the recent weeks at Iraq’s southern provinces, adding pressure to the outgoing government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi who declared a set of measures to offset the water shortage.

Besides Euphrates, Iraq had also detected a drop in water levels at the Tigris River in Baghdad and djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
, which aroused fears of drought resulting from the Ottoman Turkish Ilisu dam, a project which Iraq warns could affect water levels in the country.
Correction: With brotherly Muslim friends like these...
Posted by: trailing wife || 09/18/2018 00:00 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Syria

#1  Wars don't have to be fought with bullets and bayonets.
Posted by: Bobby || 09/18/2018 9:08 Comments || Top||

#2  The headwaters of those rivers are in Turkey. Turkey has been steadily increasing irrigated extent the last few years, hmmm? So blaming Syria seems ... premature.
Posted by: magpie || 09/18/2018 19:23 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
Well-Off Millennials Are All Julia Salazar. I Wish We Weren't.
h/t instapundit
Maybe this is part of why Julia Salazar’s much-reported embellishments of her own background didn’t torpedo her campaign for State Senate in Brooklyn. Even articles reporting on her win last night led with the controversy over how she’s described her backstory: The New York Post condemned her personal story ‐ a big part of her appeal ‐ as "wildly exaggerated." Salazar has said she immigrated from Colombia when she was, in fact, born in Florida; asserted a "working-class background" that her brother strongly denied, offering photos of the family’s four-bedroom riverfront house; said she went to work at 14 to "make ends meet," which her mother contradicted; implied her mother hadn’t gone to college when her mother got a degree when Salazar was 8 years old; asserted a very confused timeline about her conversion to Judaism; and claimed Jewish ancestry nobody could verify.

There’s no interpretation of Salazar’s claims about her life that can escape the conclusion that she presented a selectively edited and lightly fabricated account of her personal history, and Rolling Stone seemed baffled to have to report last night that "the constituents of District 18 were apparently untroubled" by that. But I wonder if the supporters ‐ certainly the young, mostly white, recent college graduates who flooded her victory party ‐ didn’t recognize, at least subconsciously, that this kind of thing is just way more common than we’d like to admit.

Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 09/18/2018 15:06 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:


Government
Pompeo seeks rapprochement with alienated U.S. diplomats
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has nearly doubled promotions of top American diplomats as he seeks to restore diplomatic ties with a workforce alienated by his predecessor, Rex Tillerson.

Since taking over in April, Pompeo has lavished attention on diplomats demoralized by the former oil executive’s distant management style, reluctance to consult in-house experts and inability to get personnel choices through President Donald Trump’s White House.

The charm offensive by the former Republican lawmaker and CIA director includes resuming the hiring of diplomats’ family members when posted abroad, cheerleading emails to staff about his travels and a push to replenish the top ranks of U.S. diplomacy, officials said.

The most tangible sign of Pompeo’s effort may be the State Department promotion lists, disclosed internally since Aug. 31 and reviewed by Reuters, which show Pompeo has sharply increased the number of diplomats promoted to three of the top four ranks.

According to a provisional agency document circulated internally on Friday, Pompeo recommended doubling the number of "career ministers" - the second-highest rank in the U.S. foreign service - to eight from four. (tmsnrt.rs/2xcHMTc)

Pompeo also proposed nearly doubling those promoted to the third rank, "minister-counselor," to 68 from 35 the year before.
Posted by: Besoeker || 09/18/2018 02:00 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Typical gov't problem solving method, simply throw more money at the problem.
Posted by: Besoeker || 09/18/2018 8:32 Comments || Top||

#2  More of other people's money at the problem

If you take their advice and it goes sour, when will they be sacked?
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 09/18/2018 8:34 Comments || Top||

#3  Fire them, hire me.
Posted by: Unung Oppressor of the Brontosaurs3297 || 09/18/2018 8:46 Comments || Top||

#4  Fire them, hire me.

We are a patronage and Affirmative Action driven organization. Please tell us how you heard about us ?
Posted by: Besoeker || 09/18/2018 8:54 Comments || Top||

#5  One does hope none of those promoted to the level where President Trump can simply demand their resignation will subsequently turn up in the Beitbart investigation or that of Project Veritas...
Posted by: trailing wife || 09/18/2018 9:17 Comments || Top||

#6  Increase salaries on an annual basis also pension and retiree benefits.

Works every time.
Posted by: jpal || 09/18/2018 10:06 Comments || Top||

#7  Enough of the old dead wood resigned retired to promote others. Not quite the bearded Spock promotion system, but it seems to have worked.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 09/18/2018 10:10 Comments || Top||

#8  Clowns think they are back at Harvard where everyone gets an A.
Posted by: Bugs Stalin6286 || 09/18/2018 10:22 Comments || Top||

#9  He might want to watch the O'Keefe video first.
Posted by: charger || 09/18/2018 15:38 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
20[untagged]
5Sublime Porte
5Govt of Syria
5Islamic State
5Moslem Colonists
2Hamas
2Houthis
2Govt of Iran
1Abu Sayyaf (ISIS)
1Hezbollah
1al-Nusra
1Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters
1Commies
1Govt of Iran Proxies
1Govt of Iraq

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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.
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Meet the Mods
In no particular order...
Steve White
Seafarious
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trailing wife
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Two weeks of WOT
Tue 2018-09-18
  Report: Syria mistakenly downs Russian plane as it attempts to repel alleged Israeli strike
Mon 2018-09-17
  Boko Haram gang members sentenced to ten years for murder -- community outraged
Sun 2018-09-16
  Ethiopian Air Force Conducts Airstrike Against Al-Shabaab In Somalia
Sat 2018-09-15
  Man Drives Car into Crowd in Southern France, Wounding Two
Fri 2018-09-14
  Sweida: Syrian Army advances 3.5km deep into ISIS-held territory
Thu 2018-09-13
  Mosul clearance continues: turban cell tied up, 13 more died tired, 3 innocents kaboomed
Wed 2018-09-12
  Nangarhar: Momand Dara district jacket wallah causes 160 casualties, Taliban say wasn’t them
Tue 2018-09-11
  9/11/2018: On this day, we remember
Mon 2018-09-10
  84 dead in fighting in Yemen's Hodeida after talks fail
Sun 2018-09-09
  Battle for Idlib & Hama finally begins
Sat 2018-09-08
  Syrian army advances in al-Safa, killing over 40 turbans, 1000+ trapped on volcano
Fri 2018-09-07
  Houthis fire missiles toward two southern Saudi airports, hit one
Thu 2018-09-06
  Two major Syrian Army divisions head toward Hama for upcoming offensive
Wed 2018-09-05
  Al Qaeda trying to regain primacy as Islamic State loses ground: NATO
Tue 2018-09-04
  Jalaluddin Haqqani joins the Choir Eternal


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