[KhaamaPress] Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, the leader of Hezb-e-Islami Afghanistan, the most radical krazed killer resistant group against the Soviet invasion and now turned politician, has once again disappointed his masters‐Pak establishment‐ by performing extremely poor in the electoral results. He secured only 70,427 (3.85%) votes. The penalty of one million Afghanis, having failed to secure 10% of the votes, adds salt to the wounds. As a warlord, he failed to capture Kabul and as a politician, he fails to secure 10% votes let alone claiming victory in presidential elections.
The history between Pakistain, particularly the Inter-Services Intelligence ...the Pak military intelligence agency that controls the military -- heads of ISI typically get promoted into the Chief of Army Staff position. It serves as a general command center for favored turban groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, tries to influence the politix of neighboring countries, and carries out a (usually) low-level war against India in Kashmir... (ISI) Directorate, and Gulbaddin Hekmatyar date back to 1973 when the Afghanistan's Caped President Daud initiated cracking down on the Islamist leaders and compelled them to exile. Hekmatyar was among the rebels who were received by the Zulfiqar Bhutto government as ’state guests’ and received training, logistics and monetary assistance from the ISI which valued them as strategic assets against the nationalist policies and expansionist aspirations of Afghan premier, Daud Khan.
Continued on Page 49
[PJ] In February 2018, Rep. Devin Nunes and his staff publicly released a memo arguing that there were some very serious issues with the FBI investigation into the so-called Russia Collusion from Team Trump. They especially pointed at FISA warrants that seemed to have been granted to the FBI based on flawed (or even downright dishonest) information. Shortly after, Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff and his team released a memo of their own, arguing that the Nunes memo was completely and utterly wrong.
Appearing on Fox News, Rep. Matt Gaetz (a Republican from Florida) had a thing or two to say on this matter. "When Devin Nunes put out his memo and Schiff put out his response, you heard the mainstream media say: 'Oh, the Nunes memo has now been debunked by the Schiff memo, this is obviously the truth'," Gaetz said. "Well, we now have something that we rarely get in Washington politics: an actual verdict. An actual result from the Obama-appointed Inspector General saying Nunes was right all along, Schiff was wrong."
Although that's a great point -- and although it may actually help Republicans electorally -- it is also a problem. "Why does that matter?" Gaetz asked rhetorically. "Schiff is not just a member of Congress, he's a member of the Gang of 8. So there's intelligence as an Armed Services Committee member that I cannot see, but I have to rely on Schiff and others in the Gang of 8 to correctly assess that intelligence and give us their accurate perceptions."
"That is one of the reasons that I have filed legislation expressing the sense of the House that Schiff should be removed as the Intelligence Chairman so that we at least get clear eyes on the most important intelligence analysis that faces the country," Gaetz concluded.
[American Thinker] - Even though she continues campaigning for the 2020 Democrat presidential nomination, it is now clear to me that Tulsi Gabbard’s real goal has nothing to do with wining the donkeys’ nod this election cycle. Her vote of "present" on the House’s articles of impeachment ensures that she has no chance this time around, and now, in an interview with ABC News (video not yet available), she goes even further and tips her hand.
Gabbard campaigning in New Hampshire yesterday, YouTube screen grab The Hill reports:
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hi.), a 2020 presidential candidate, elaborated on her rationale for voting "present" on articles of impeachment against President Trump, telling ABC News impeachment proceedings will only "embolden" the president.
"I think impeachment, unfortunately, will only further embolden Donald Trump, increase his support and the likelihood that he'll have a better shot at getting elected while also seeing the likelihood that the House will lose a lot of seats to Republicans," Gabbard told ABC in New Hampshire Saturday.
Gabbard, who has announced she will not seek re-election to her House seat, said she was concerned Trump’s all-but-inevitable acquittal in the Republican Senate could ensure "lasting damage" in the event that Trump is re-elected and the GOP regains control of the House.
...I think that Gabbard sees the disaster that lies ahead for her party and is positioning herself as a person who can lead the it in a new direction. She is emphatically denouncing Trump, so can’t be accused of being soft on him. Instead she is criticizing the tactic of employing impeachment as a political weapon, setting herself up as a wise tactician to lead the party forward after the predictable disaster.
So far, Gabbard is the sole Democrat politician that I know of who is looking beyond the consuming fury of Trump Derangement with her eye on the future of her party beyond the next 10 months.
While I credit her for this, it is not blinding wisdom, but merely common sense. That she is unique in her party says a lot.
#1
Gabbard has a lot wrong with her, her anti-Second Amendment stance being one of them.
However I greatly respect her because she served. I respect her because she wants no more wars. I respect her because other than Trump, she is the only pro-American candidate on all sides.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
12/30/2019 0:42 Comments ||
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#2
She's a flake, but I agree that it's enormously useful to have a Democrat calling BS on other Dems and on the Uniparty and their global grifters.
But really, someone needs to give her a better tagline than her robotically bleated, "regime change wars." Not relevant anymore.
Say something intelligent about China or Russia. Start reading a bit more. Expand your knowledge of world events, also your vocabulary.
#3
One of the major troubles with the current Democratic party is on display right now. Tulsi Gabbard has my respect (never my vote, but my respect). But she's only a member of the House, and not one who has served for particularly long either. The fact that she, with her limited qualifications and low name recognition, is forming her own faction within the party, is a sign of the decay with the Democrats. This goes even more so for the mayor of South Bend, Pete Buttieg. I don't dispute that successful mayors of major cities (even just major regional cities like, say, Boise or Des Moines) shouldn't be disregarded in the political process. But mayor of a small town to President is not a jump that somebody should make with a great deal more experience (like being a Lieutenant General, or a CEO, or something).
#4
Herb called it - she has integrity even if she is on the wrong side of a number of issues. Harks back to the days when you could respect a political opponent. She'd fit so much better as an Indie than a Donk.
#5
"But really, someone needs to give her a better tagline than her robotically bleated, "regime change wars." Not relevant anymore."
What's wrong with that? It's very relevant. I don't find it robotic at all, it's a slogan that needs to be hammered home at every opportunity. It's not America's job to meddle in hostile foreign lands.
If the Dems take the White House in 2020, you can expect a 180 and right back to making war after war, cheerleaded by the New York Times and the rest of the lying press, who will soberly explain that this is all necessary for national security interests that they can't disclose right now.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
12/30/2019 10:39 Comments ||
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#6
No exaggeration intended, its almost as if one needs to be a Republican nowadays if one actually loves this country. Tulsi has no chance within the Democratic party.
#7
Give it up, Hoib. No one here is "meddling" in the ChiComs' decision to make Xi leader-for-life, or in Russian leadership's decision to keep puttin' Putin in the big chair. Nobody. That debate is dead.
What we need people like this person and others who would lecture us on foreign policy to do now is articulate how we will contain China's rise, extract ourselves from Afghanistan/Pakistan/Iraq, come to an accommodation with Russia that suits our and their vital national interests, and rein in Iran's mischief without being dragged into yet another land war in Asia.
Mouthing the phrase "regime change bad!" ad infinitum doesn't begin to answer any of the above questions.
All of the problems you listed were caused by meddling. We meddled in the 1996 Russian election that led directly to the rise of Putin. We stupidly admitted China to the WTO. We decided wars in Afghan/Pak/Iraq were a great ideas that were going to turn out well.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
12/30/2019 13:07 Comments ||
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#9
All of the problems you listed were caused by meddling.
"Meddling" - pshaw. You're just as Amero-centric as the lefties you scorn.
We don't drive, and we haven't driven, events in Russia. Ever.
Putin's rise was engineered by his FSB pals and their cronies/wannabe oligarchs. We had NOTHING whatsoever to do with those internal machinations of the Russian elite.
Putin's subsequent broad popularity among Russians - corrupt and brutal though he is, the man pays their pensions in full and on time, and stands up for his nation - is what more than any other factor has allowed him to keep his grip on power.
Again, we have NOTHING to do with any of these outcomes - for good or for ill.
#11
Not much. After the polnyi bardak - Russkii for shitshow - of Yeltsin's drunken misrule, the Russian nation needed a strong hand. The only functioning, coherent institution in that country was the security services. If not Putin, then some other security figure inevitably would have emerged.
#13
Voting present is a cop out. It's an admission that she is too timid to take a stand one way or the other, a lack of backbone. It's a failure to represent her constituents. It's the kind of thing that Obama would do to deliberately obfuscate what his real agenda was.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/30/2019 13:31 Comments ||
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#14
Our Russia policy for the last 25+ years has been a carnival of errors.
Worst of all is the neo-McCarthyism and denunciation culture that is making it nearly impossible for young Russia scholars to call BS on our foreign policy elites' stupidity and mistakes.
I don't agree with his general worldview, but cf. the great Princeton scholar Stephen F. Cohen for more on this disturbing and ultimately self-defeating new tendency of destroying the academic or media career of anyone who says anything remotely construed as not sufficiently anti-Russian. This madness will destroy this nation.
#15
I think Tulsi Gabbard is the one to watch for, in the near future. A quiet determination, the controlled intensity of the well-managed loon, and charisma. That, and she is an image as far from Democrat level crazy you can get without eschewing any of their socialist dogma. I think what she did is a sign of a useless person, but she could become America's most favorite useless person for 2024.
#18
I don't agree with his general worldview, but cf. the great Princeton scholar Stephen F. Cohen for more on this disturbing and ultimately self-defeating new tendency of destroying the academic or media career of anyone who says anything remotely construed as not sufficiently anti-Russian.
Meanwhile China, the far greater threat, gets a pass.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/30/2019 14:38 Comments ||
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[NYPOST] Taxpayers in Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, and New York shoulder some of the heaviest tax burdens in the nation, and now new data show the two have something else in common: Their growth rates have slowed.
It’s probably no coincidence.
According to the California Department of Finance, during the year that ended June 30, more people left the Golden State than moved in ‐ the first time that’s happened since 2010.
Its net population grew by 141,300, to 39.96 million. That’s a increase of just 0.35 percent, down from 0.57 percent growth over the prior 12 months. Together, the two years mark California’s smallest growth in more than a century.
One obvious reason: As the Los Angeles Times notes, the Golden State has one of the highest tax burdens in America.
Here in New York, meanwhile, taxpayers also bear some of the nation’s highest tax burdens. And guess what: This state has long been watching its share of the national population shrink.
No, taxes alone aren’t to blame: Both states, for example, are famous for their progressive policies, hostility to businesses and onerous mandates.
Gov. Cuomo even cites New York’s weather, versus, say, Florida’s ‐ though chilly Midwestern states like Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota aren’t facing significant chronic out-migration, and it’s not likely many Californians are fleeing for warmer climes.
Fact is, year after year, large majorities of the remaining voters in both states elect pols who push through yet more progressive policies, higher taxes and stiff mandates. Expect the rest to keep on voting with their feet.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/30/2019 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[12 views]
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#4
Hey, g(r)om, you've been in the American southwest, you think there are any suitable cities with a climate similar to parts of Israel that might be more 'friendly' to the community that wants to remain in America?
#5
The isolation of Hasidic communities confronted by the economic class hatred of democrat created entitlement sectors. (Sorry, the irony meter is attending mandatory Rantburg University sensitivity training).
#16
Likely he is a Black Hebrew Israelite. We had a shooting by one of their members in our area a couple of years ago. In July of 2016, Lakeem Keon Scott, a Black Hebrew Israelite committed a terror attack in Bristol, Tennessee. His association with BHI is not widely known. Makes you wonder how many other attacks related to this group are covered up as well.
#18
From the Department of Middle Eastern and African History (Tel Aviv University) a study conducted into the success rate of inducting the BHIs into the IDF, which they'd been lobbying for.
Excerpts from the report by Andrew Esenstein :
► The African Hebrews maintain that they have been ready and willing to serve in the military since they arrived in Israel (Fishkoff 1993). In the late 1980s, a group of young African Hebrew men presented themselves at IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv and asked to be drafted into the army as volunteers. They were rejected, presumably because they lacked legal status in the country. In addition, persistent but unfounded rumors that the African Hebrews were colluding with Israel’s Arab enemies also would have made army officials hesitant to draft them. On this point, the Glass report stated.
► Meanwhile, members of other U.S.-based Hebrew Israelite camps loudly condemned the AHIJ for collaborating with the “Zionist” regime in Israel and directly contributing to the oppression of the Palestinians, whose plight is sometimes compared to that of African Americans under the system of racial discrimination known as Jim Crow and to blacks under apartheid in South Africa.
► The IDF did not succeed in creating Israelis out of African Hebrew soldiers interviewed for this project because they were enculturated from a young age with a unique set of values and beliefs about themselves and others that no state institution could unteach.
The full study. Rather lengthy but interesting. Politely left incomplete I think.
In short, a 'Rise Of The Planet' type of attempt to encroach on Israeli culture as they do everywhere else, under the influence of some drug crazed mindfuck of a doctrine. Or, a deliberate, attempt to weaponize a community to vilify, compromise or sabotage Israeli interests by grafting these things into the Israeli mainstream. Apparently, they are opposed to non-zionists too. Maybe that's where this aggression is coming from. Who can know with specimens so far gone off evolution ? Do note the Liberia connexion if you read the whole thing.
#20
Grom must know if any still serve there. I know about some in the sayeret Golani that was formed in the 50s, but those were American and even Congolese. I've never heard of sectarian BHJs being accommodated like the report talks about, but I'll ask around.
#24
I think Lord Garth nailed it. There is a history of hostility that was kept in check by law enforcement. The Ferguson effect has removed that law enforcement.
Posted by: Matt ||
12/30/2019 15:09 Comments ||
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#26
When you've told a group over and over and over and over that they're "victims" its not so surprising that they eventually cease taking any responsibility for their actions.
Thomas’s former stepfather, Joe Kennedy, told Heavy in an interview that, through the time he knew him, until 2014, Grafton had grown increasingly aggressive and unstable, even attacking him with a fire extinguisher. He believes Thomas is mentally ill and also provided some biographical details, saying that Thomas had previously served in the Army, was born in America to a family with roots in Ghana, once worked on a chicken farm, and identified as Muslim.
#30
It's Fred's site, not mine. I'm trying to be suggestive of what could be problematic for visitors. Please respect the guidelines
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/30/2019 19:23 Comments ||
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#31
Seems like there are plenty of black people in the IDF, judging from a quick search in Google Images. Mostly Ethiopian I would imagine. (Though I'm no expert.)
I'm pretty sure that *nobody* wants the BHIs in their military. Sounds like recipe for disaster.
OK so the Assad chemical attack was a false flag operation designed to prevent the war from ending. We all should know this by now.
The greater crime is the media's role in covering up the scandal. This is some serious, Walter Duranty covering up Stalin's crimes-level stuff. Literal war crimes.
[CaitlinJohnstone] This is getting really, really, really weird.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
12/30/2019 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11 views]
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#1
I do not understand this at all.
Did people die in this incident?
did they have strange symptoms?
The is saying that the symptoms observed were not the result of a certain poison.
Does anyone know what that poison was, who delivered it and how it was delivered?
The reaction to the attack is, in the article, blamed on the Trump administration. And the media is accused of protecting the Trump administration.
If so that would be a first. Newsweek protects Trump?
I do not believe this.
Posted by: daniel ||
12/30/2019 1:31 Comments ||
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#2
Sorry about that, Herb — mea culpa. Guys, the rest of the article about the latest Wikileaks data dump can be read at the link, with lots and lots of links.
If humanity is to turn away from its murderous, omnicidal, ecocidal, oppressive and exploitative trajectory, it will necessarily involve a sharp, drastic deviation from all its previous patterning.
Translaton: pkjlqpxuerqweajsdfhasekbqu.mnasdf
Blog entry by "Caitlin Johnstone," Dec 12, 2019:
For some reason 9/11 keeps coming up in my online interactions with people lately, both with establishment loyalists who call me a “9/11 truther” and with skeptics who say I don’t write enough about what really happened on that day 18 years ago. So I figured I’ll bang out a few quick paragraphs on the subject in the interest of transparency, and so I don’t have to keep having the same conversations over and over again.
My position on 9/11 itself is pretty simple: I don’t know exactly what happened on the eleventh of September 2001, and I think anyone who claims to know with absolute certainty exactly what happened is fulla shit. But it’s also extremely obvious that the world was lied to about what happened by the US government and its allies, as evidenced by the massive, glaring plot holes in the official 9/11 narrative.
The most concise and rock-solid compilation of these plot holes that I have ever seen was compiled by conspiracy analyst James Corbett in this five-minute video and its accompanying source notes. Corbett made this video eight years ago on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, and to this day I believe it’s the strongest and most irrefutable case against the official narrative. .
Translation: I'm batshit crazy and completely unreliable.
#5
About Rogue journalist. Bogan socialist. Anarcho-psychonaut. Guerilla poet. Utopia prepper. Proudly 100 percent reader-funded through Patreon and Paypal. Much work done with assistance from soulmate/brother-in-arms/co-conspirator Tim Foley.
Great source, Herb. *SNORT*
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/30/2019 5:58 Comments ||
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#6
I ddin't read the whole thing but I assume there was a bit about Black Helicopters and the illuminati right?
#8
Sigh...do I really have to trot this out again?
You people are on the second-to-lowest level, ad hominem. You are not addressing the argument, you are attacking the speaker.
All the source documents are at the link. They are Wikileaks, so they are directly from the authorities concerned. Please don't trust me or this blogger, read them yourself. Come to your own conclusions.
The conclusions everyone else has come to is that this was a completely staged event, designed to prevent Trump from ending the Syrian war.
Minutes from an OPCW meeting with toxicologists specialized in chemical weapons: “the experts were conclusive in their statements that there was no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure”
OPCW is leaking like a sieve. It was a staged event. This is huge. Why is anyone trying to poo-poo it because I posted a blog link with a summary of the details? Is it because you want the wool pulled over your eyes? That can't be it. Rantburgers are too smart for that, you people sniff out this sort of stuff in other countries all the time.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
12/30/2019 10:23 Comments ||
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#9
Thanks Herb. Not quite sure what we'd do without your pyramid memory jogger.
#11
According to the leaked minutes from the toxicology meeting, the chief expert offered “the possibility of the event being a propaganda exercise” as one potential explanation for the Douma incident. The other OPCW experts agreed that the key “take-away message” from the meeting was “that the symptoms observed were inconsistent with exposure to chlorine and no other obvious candidate chemical causing the symptoms could be identified”.
I take that as a single data point.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/30/2019 12:22 Comments ||
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Clearly written before yesterday’s most interesting events, in which President Trump neatly cut through the Gordian knot. It seems he was told interesting things during his quiet meetings with various enlisted troops.
[Rudaw] On Friday, a US contractor was killed and several American soldiers were maimed in a rocket attack on their base near Kirkuk. The rockets used in the attack appear to be of the same Iranian make as a 2009 shipment from Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan, the abbreviation IRGC is a cognate form of Stürmabteilung (or SA), the term Supreme Guide is a cognate form of either Shah or Führer or maybe both, and they hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... to Hezbollah that the Israelis intercepted. Seth Frantzman of the Jerusalem Post notes that these were also the same kind of rockets that Iran seems to have provided to Syria, and which Assad used to attack Eastern Ghouta in 2017.
Some three dozen of these 107mm rockets were fired at the US base by unknown assailants. However,
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/30/2019 00:00 ||
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Link ||
[16 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
h/t Mrs. Bobby
[Dallas News] We might say Max Glauben started becoming the 2019 Texan of the Year in 1941 when he wriggled into a cramped smuggler’s space under the false bottom of a horse-drawn wagon to sneak out of the Warsaw Ghetto in search of food. He had a homemade tool, a funnel with a sharp end, with which to siphon rice or beans out of burlap shipping sacks.
A few weeks from now, Glauben will be 92. At 5-foot-3 he’s still small enough, and probably spry enough, to fit into a smuggler’s hold. His preoccupation these days is not with hiding things, but with bringing them into the light. Glauben is one of a rapidly shrinking number of survivors who can remember what is arguably humankind’s darkest chapter. He is a tireless speaker, sharing his incredible story of survival with schools, museums and civic groups as often as he can. He is a key player in the creation of the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum.
Max and Frieda Glauben embody virtues our society is in danger of losing: faithfulness, authenticity, optimism, humility, wisdom, grace, and a strength that seems too much to carry in a shaky, thin-haired frame. Glauben, in German, means believe.
Earlier this year, Glauben sat for 40 hours of interviews over the course of several days, telling his story in detail and responding to hundreds of questions. All of that content is loaded into the holographic system along with voice recognition software so that museum visitors can ask him almost any question and get a response. Those 200,000 visitors per year, many of them schoolchildren on field trips, will get a near-realistic face-to-face conversation with a Holocaust survivor. When the holographic theater was unveiled earlier this year, D magazine hailed it with the headline, "Max Glauben Will Live Forever." Sniff. Do read the whole thing. I visited the interim museum, last summer, and saw the boxcar for 40 men or eight horses, into which Max and 99 others were crammed for five days.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/30/2019 12:02 ||
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Link ||
[11 views]
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#1
>saw the boxcar for 40 men or eight horses, into which Max and 99 others were crammed
h/t Instapundit
[Spectator] - Thanksgiving Day, the most American of holidays, found President Trump performing one of the nation’s few remaining civic rites: supporting the troops. When the President secretly flew to Afghanistan to feed and thank servicemen at Bagram Air Base, he got a cheering hangar full of airmen in return.
Those turkey-stuffed troops were a captive audience, of course. Still, enthusiasm for Trump among American servicemen, both active-duty and veteran, seems to be one of the more genuine things about this surreal phase of American politics.
In polls, support for the president among veterans far outpaces that among Americans at large. Whenever Trump visits the troops, military leaders struggle to rein in the display of unauthorized MAGA paraphernalia. One former US Central Command planner described the support for Trump among much of the military as ’downright cult-like’. Surprising indeed being treated like human beings & patriots instead of expendable robo-cops
#1
enthusiasm for Trump among American servicemen, both active-duty and veteran, seems to be one of the more genuine things about this surreal phase of American politics.
Surreal phase, indeed. Of all US institutions, the military is the only non-surreal one that remains grounded in reality, competent, admirable and professional.
Compare:
A) Vast majority of Active Duty US servicemen : sane, grounded, zero tolerance for BS identity politics and virtue-signaling because of their urgent and serious calling.
B) Vast majority of politically-active Americans : borderline or outright insane, crazed with blood-feud hatred of Genghis Mussolini Orangier and his irredeemable perfidy, zero time for anything but identity politics and virtue-signaling because of the demands of the
24/7,
All-Hatred,
All-BS-All-The-Time,
ineffably f-able
SHITSHOW
#4
The author of that extremely well-written article disapproves of the pardons, but he's downright scathing about the generals:
When the [generals'] uniforms come off, opportunities abound. There are Rolodexes to be exploited and sinecures to be won in the military-industrial complex. The more cerebral can find think-tank perches and mix business with pleasure. It might not be tech money, but selling planes to your Naval Academy roommate can at least net a winter home on the Gulf Coast and ensure your kids go to Southern Cal instead of Southern Miss.
For the handful of military superstars in winner-take-all America, the rewards are far richer. Airport nonfiction shelves, five- or six-digit speaker’s fees and even private equity jobs await. For these modern nabobs, victory isn’t a prerequisite to cashing in. Robert Clive and his fellow East India Company men at least had to break somebody else’s empire before they could gorge themselves. Our Clives just do a bit of damage to their own before the meal arrives.
Small wonder that while America’s troops must listen to their generals, her veterans increasingly feel no such compunction.
[Expert Analysis and Commentary) December 20, 2019. Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison announces that the City of Baltimore is resurrecting a spy plane program to monitor its citizens. The pilot program, a follow-on to a previous similar effort, will use up to three separate aircraft flying at different altitudes and a variety of "high-tech" sensors to monitor Baltimore residents and help deter violent crime.
December 6, 2019. A Saudi aviator in training pulls out a handgun in a classroom at Naval Air Station Pensacola and opens fire, killing three and injuring eight before a deputy fatally shoots him. Mohammed Saeed Al-Shamrani is a member of the Saudi military and has been in the United States training for over two years. Al-Shamrani is one of 852 Saudi nationals in the United States for training at the time of the shooting.
September 14, 2019. Drones and missiles launched from southern Iran strike the Saudi Aramco oil processing facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais. Saudi air defenses do not intercept the attacking drones and missiles, because they are all oriented to the south to protect against Houthi attacks from Yemen. Oil prices worldwide soar 20% in the aftermath of the attacks.
What do these three, seemingly disparate, events have in common? They are all failures in intelligence and, more specifically, they are all failures in human intelligence.
Baltimore has a population of 602,000 people. Within the city many people live in areas that are relatively crime free. Violence, and the drug trade that fuels that violence is concentrated in compact areas in western and eastern Baltimore. The total population in these portions of the city does not exceed 300,000 people.
And yet, the Baltimore City Police Department, supported by state and federal agencies such as the FBI and ATF, is so blind as to what is happening within neighborhoods that don’t take thirty minutes to drive across that it must resort to spy planes in a desperate bid to regain the initiative?
#1
And yet, the Baltimore City Police Department, supported by state and federal agencies such as the FBI and ATF, is so blind as to what is happening within neighborhoods....
No, they are not blind. The reason nothing is done about this tribal savagery is quite obvious.
If you've never read Glenn Beaton, enjoy. You can still catch him at this site even if the Aspen Times just canned him for "wrongthink".
[TheAspenBeat] Note to readers: I know you’re expecting a column about my surprise Christmas Eve firing from the Aspen Times for "values" contrary to theirs. Look for that column next time (and a national publication is interested in it!). Meanwhile, you’ll like this end-of-year piece.
Yogi Berra observed that predictions are tough, especially about the future. But tough as they are, readers inform me that predictions about the future would be more useful to them than my usual predictions about the past. So here goes.
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.
[KhaamaPress] Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, the leader of Hezb-e-Islami Afghanistan, the most radical
[PJ] In February 2018, Rep. Devin Nunes and his staff publicly released a memo arguing that there were some very serious issues with the FBI investigation into the so-called Russia Collusion from Team Trump. They especially pointed at FISA warrants that seemed to have been granted to the FBI based on flawed (or even downright dishonest) information. Shortly after, Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff and his team released a memo of their own, arguing that the Nunes memo was completely and utterly wrong.
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for 
>saw the boxcar for 40 men or eight horses, into which Max and 99 others were crammed
