[USA Today] When James DeLine became a rural doctor, he had no experience treating the Amish, and no idea he'd be at the cutting edge of genetic medicine.
MILWAUKEE, Wis. ‐ It is 5 degrees below zero and a light powdering of snow swirls across the roads of Vernon County. A few horses and buggies clop through the chill morning air, but Perry Hochstetler leaves his buggy at the family farm and has a driver take him to his doctor’s appointment.
The Hochstetlers are Amish. With no health insurance and a modest income, they cannot afford most doctors.
They can afford James DeLine, once the lone doctor in the western Wisconsin village of La Farge. Population 750.
When he became the village doctor in 1983, DeLine had no experience treating the Amish and no idea the crucial role they would play in his work. Today, about 20% of the doctor’s patients are Amish or Old Order Mennonite, part of a Christian population called Plain People. They are known for their separation from the modern world and adherence to a simple lifestyle and unadorned dress.
Something of a throwback himself, DeLine, 65, is a short, bespectacled man with a walrus mustache, a doctor who carries a brown medical bag to house calls. For years, he carried his equipment in a fishing tackle box.
He knows the families on every local farm and their medical histories. He knows who’s been born, and calls on the mothers and infants to make sure they are healthy. He knows who’s dying, and looks in on them in their final days, sitting by their bedside, talking in a gentle voice, making sure they have what they need for pain.
Sen. Kamala Harris is ending her presidential campaign.
Harris, D-Calif., informed her staff Tuesday that she is suspending her campaign, an aide told CNBC.
Earlier Tuesday, CNBC reported that Harris canceled a fundraising event in New York amid reports of turmoil within her campaign. Tulsi Gabbard says: "Kiss my @ss"
Harris, 55, was the only black candidate whose polling numbers and national media attention had placed her in the top tier of the 2020 contest, if only for a short while.
She made waves with her announcement in January, nailing a campaign rollout that earned praise from Democrats ‐ and even a compliment from President Donald Trump.
"I would say, the best opening so far would be Kamala Harris," Trump said at the time.
In the months following her positive first impression, Harris and her campaign showed the makings of a contender who might be in it for the long haul.
She landed perhaps the hardest and clearest punch of the early primary debate cycle, when she tore into the frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden, over his comments about working with segregationist lawmakers and his past views on busing.
The attack gave her a spotlight on that stage, as well as a clear bump in the polls and a hefty fundraising boost.
But her rise in popularity appeared to evaporate soon after, and her performance in the second debate was widely viewed as subpar. Harris’ fundraising numbers consistently trailed her leading competitors, and some of her donors reportedly considered dropping her if she failed to impress going forward.
Asked about Harris’ exit from the 2020 race, Biden said Tuesday that he had "mixed emotions," though he added that Harris was a first-rate intellect and a strong competitor, NBC News reported.
A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the latest departure from the Democratic primary.
Harris also faced criticism on her policy platform. In her breakout first debate performance in June, Harris had raised her hand when a moderator asked which of the candidates supported abolishing private insurance in favor of a government-run single-payer alternative.
A day later, she appeared to reverse herself, saying a Harris administration would preserve supplemental private insurance.
As the Iowa caucuses neared, Harris’ campaign further suffered from a lack of a clear strategy and a fractured and disgruntled campaign staff, according to multiple media reports.
By the end of November, the RealClearPolitics aggregate of candidate polls showed Harris sliding into the low single digits, while the nearest candidate above her, South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, appeared to be surging higher.
[Politico] Kamala Harris is dropping out of the presidential race, she told staff on a call Tuesday. She will release a video momentarily announcing her plans.
#3
"and that little whore girl was me"
That could be Snark of the Day.
I'm sorry to see her go. Not because she was a viable candidate or would make a good Prez (saints preserve us!). I'm just in it for the chaos. Bring on the clowns!
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
12/03/2019 16:12
Comments ||
Top||
#10
Darn. Now my Harris/Abrams (and the coveted Abrams/Harris "who's on top") bumper stickers are no longer useful to stir things up. Collector's items maybe!
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
12/03/2019 16:17
Comments ||
Top||
#11
The Orange Man has a 'Schiff Pot' full of money. Mebe he could loan her some to stay in the game. She'll be missed.
#12
...My campaign for president simply doesn’t have the financial resources we need to continue ."
In the marketplace of ideas, your product didn't sell. Welcome to the invisible hand of the marketplace, something totally alien to socialist authoritarians like yourself.
#15
Headline from Ace of Spades: "Kamala Harris Dropping Out of Presidential Race to Spend More Time With Her White Wine Spritzer and Vibrator" Harsh but fair.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
12/03/2019 19:36
Comments ||
Top||
#16
Lol
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/03/2019 19:52
Comments ||
Top||
#17
Beware. She's likely running for Attorney General.
God help us.
[Forbes] George Pedersen cofounded his firm ManTech International back in 1968 with a single contract with the U.S. Navy, reportedly to build war-gaming models for the submarining community. Now the defense and intelligence contractor has 8,700 employees and nearly $2 billion in annual revenue. After a recent run-up in the stock, Pedersen is now a billionaire thanks to his stake in the Nasdaq-listed company. The 84-year-old owns a third of the firm, which has a market capitalization of $3.1 billion.
ManTech’s nine-figure contracts run the gamut from cybersecurity solutions for the Department of Homeland Security to IT systems engineering for the U.S. Army. ManTech declined to comment for this article.
The share price of the Fairfax, Virginia-based company has risen nearly 30% since the beginning of 2019. Some of that is the result of posting better-than-expected third quarter earnings on October 30. ManTech reported earnings per share of $0.69, beating analyst expectations of $0.60, and revenue of $579 million, exceeding the consensus by $20 million. ManTech’s acquisition this spring of Kforce Government Solutions, which provides IT staffing services to federal agencies such as the Department of Veteran Affairs, has boosted earnings.
Biden, Buttigieg, Harris, Klobuchar, Sanders, Warren have qualified.
Yang and Gabbard need one more poll.
Steyer needs to reach donor number threshold.
Booker needs 4 more polls and thus doesn't look like he'll make it.
Deval Patrick only announced recently and won't qualify.
Mike Bloomberg won't be accepting ANY donations and so will not be in any of the Dem Debates. He has, however, used his decline of donations as a talking point in ads and is already past Kamala Harris in some polls.
Details at the link.
Posted by: lord garth ||
12/03/2019
11:43 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[17 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
update
Steyer reached the donor threshold and he will be in the December debate.
Posted by: lord garth ||
12/03/2019 13:18
Comments ||
Top||
#2
My wife just informed me Kamala has dropped out.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/03/2019 13:36
Comments ||
Top||
#3
Oh, goody - more insufferable Tom Steyer ads to look forward to. I heard the same 'Term Limits!' radio ad every fucking 1/2 hour on the local sports talk radio channel yesterday.
[News with Views] The plain, unvarnished truth is that public education is a shoddy, fraudulent piece of goods sold to the public at an astronomical price. It’s time the American consumer knew the extent of the fraud which is victimizing millions of children each year. ‐Samuel Blumenfeld
Orwell was dealing with communism and his disillusionment with communism in Russia and what he saw the communists do in Spain. His novel, 1984, was a response to those political situations. Whereas I was interested in more things than the political atmosphere. I was considering the whole social atmosphere: the impact of TV and radio and the lack of education. I could see the coming event of schoolteachers not teaching reading anymore. The less they taught, the more you wouldn’t need books. ‐Ray Bradbury
Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel. ‐Socrates
Give me just one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world. ‐Vladimir Lenin
My maternal grandparents graduated from 8th grade in 1911. Their framed diplomas hang on our library wall. Each diploma states, "Having passed a credible examination in Orthography (the spelling system of a language), Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Geography, English Grammar, Physiology, United States History, and Music, and having sustained a correct deportment is granted this certificate of proficiency." Oh, to have these subjects in today’s grammar schools.
I highly doubt any of today’s college graduates could pass the tests my grandparents passed to graduate from 8th grade. Most cannot read at a proficient level. Why? Because phonics has been eliminated, and yet it’s so easy to teach. If America’s children can’t read, they cannot gain knowledge, they cannot read their Bibles, and they cannot read America’s Declaration of Independence or Constitution.
The best approach for the majority of children is systematic phonics, the simple concept of teaching the 26 letters of the alphabet, the 44 sounds they make, and the 70 most common ways to spell those sounds. For most children, learning this basic code unlocks 85 percent of the words in the English language by the end of the first grade. Children of all levels of intelligence can learn to read most words simply by learning the correspondence between sounds and letters.
Parents say their toddlers are so bright, but once they are put into the government education system, which totally lacks phonics and academic training, they become bored little socialists who have been thoroughly brainwashed with leftist ideology. They are victims as education expert Samuel Blumenfeld has so rightly stated, and it was the Unitarians at Harvard University who promoted public education, removing it from the family, churches/synagogues and private institutions so long ago.
Countless books have been written regarding the damaging effects of what American education has become along with the Outcome Based Education Skinnerian International Curriculum and how it destroys our children. For a full overview of the continued damage to America’s children, I would suggest purchasing Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children, by Samuel Blumenfeld and Alex Newman. Pdf Link
Blumenfeld puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of the educational leaders who decided early in the last century to change the purpose of education from its traditional academic function to a radical social one. High literacy was an obstacle to their progressive agenda, so the teaching of reading had to be changed to produce a more socially desirable result. The results for the nation have been disastrous.
#3
IMO, the real corruption is not the leftard world view they're pushing (any school kid worth spit knows not to trust teachers on soft subjects), it's the semi-illiterates they certify.
#4
I remember back in the late 1980's/early 1990's one evening when I tried to help my daughter read a book. When she came to a word that she didn't know, I told her to sound it out, which was a basic concept I learned in the first grade during the 1950's. She did know what I meant.
Aren't they teaching her phonics? I asked Mrs. Uluque.
No, said the wife. They're using the "whole language" approach these days, some new system concocted by the "experts" in Sacramento.
Four years later, when my son was in kindergarten, he had a wonderful older and slightly rebellious teacher who taught phonics to her students on the sly. So he learned it and now possesses stacks of books. He's still a socialist but at least he can read. Maybe that's the most dangerous kind.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/03/2019 12:05
Comments ||
Top||
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
12/03/2019 12:22
Comments ||
Top||
#6
Thank you, Mullah Richard. Clarifying.
How many Ivy League undergrads today could pass this portion if the 1895-era Salinas KS 8th grade exam:
U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865?
The announcement from the Office of the United States Trade Representative ended a monthslong investigation into the French tax, which hits companies like Facebook and Google even though they have little physical presence in France. The investigation concluded that the tax "discriminates against U.S. companies, is inconsistent with prevailing principles of international tax policy and is unusually burdensome for affected U.S. companies."
It recommended tariffs as high as 100 percent on certain French imports valued at $2.4 billion, including cheese, wine and handbags.
President Trump, in London on Tuesday for a NATO summit meeting, said the finding was justified. "They’re starting to tax other people’s products," he said, according to a pool report. "So therefore we go and tax them."
France’s economy and finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, on Tuesday denounced the tariff threat as "unacceptable" and said that Europe would come ahead with a "strong response," without elaborating on possible retaliatory measures.
#2
Recent studies have shown the grape fermentation process releases hydrocarbons which contribute to the greenhouse effect. Do we really need all that wine?
#6
I've become rather fond of Australian wines. Pro bogan tip: if you buy it in a box, you can use the plastic bladder as a pillow when your need for sleep exceeds your need for fun.
Yugoslavia used to have some decent and surprisingly cheap wine before it blew up as a country. No idea about the current situation.
h/t Instapundit
[AmericanConservative] Don't be misled: elected officials are subjugated to the national security firmament. Trump is just exposing it.
What American constitutional government most urgently needs at present is for our Madisonian institutions‐the presidency, the Congress, and the courts‐to wrest back control of national security policy from an unelected and increasingly rogue national security establishment.
That ominous challenge to constitutionalism was on full display with the recent op-ed piece in the New York Times by retired Admiral William McRaven, in which he brashly warned that unless Trump jumped aboard the Forever War bandwagon, he must be removed, and "the sooner the better." The U.S. must have a policy, McRaven said, that protects "the Kurds, the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Syrians, the Rohingyas, the South Sudanese and the millions of people under the boot of tyranny."
How did we get to the point where a former senior military officer calls for the removal of a duly elected president because he doesn’t stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Rohingyas? McRaven’s op-ed represents something new in American politics: the assertion that an elected president is illegitimate unless he works to spread our "ideals of universal freedom and equality" through military action and alliances. McRaven also argued that it is "the American military...the intelligence and law enforcement community, the State Department and the press," all unelected institutions, that now embody the true American civic religion and protect its "ideals."
Remember assholes, you voted for this
[Spectator] Next year, Democrats will control both houses of Virginia's state Legislature as well as its governorship. On November 18, State Sen. Dick Saslaw introduced a bill that he will sponsor in the 2020 legislative session. That bill will outlaw not only the sale or transfer but also the possession of certain firearms.
Saslaw's bill - SB 16 - provides that "It is unlawful for any person to import, sell, manufacture, purchase, possess or transport an assault firearm" and makes such actions a Class 6 felony. (In Virginia, Class 6 felonies are punishable by imprisonment for between one and five years.)
SB 16 provides that a wide range of center-fire rifles, pistols, and shotguns are included in the definition of to-be illegal firearms:
1. A semi-automatic center-fire rifle that expels single or multiple projectiles by action of an explosion of a combustible material with a fixed magazine capacity in excess of 10 rounds;
2. A semi-automatic center-fire rifle that expels single or multiple projectiles by action of an explosion of a combustible material that has the ability to accept a detachable magazine and has one of the following characteristics: (i) a folding or telescoping stock; (ii) a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the rifle; (iii) a thumbhole stock; (iv) a second handgrip or a protruding grip that can be held by the non-trigger hand; (v) a bayonet mount; (vi) a grenade launcher; (vii) a flare launcher; (viii) a silencer; (ix) a flash suppressor; (x) a muzzle brake; (xi) a muzzle compensator; (xii) a threaded barrel capable of accepting (a) a silencer, (b) a flash suppressor, (c) a muzzle brake, or (d) a muzzle compensator; or (xiii) any characteristic of like kind as enumerated in clauses (i) through (xii);
3. A semi-automatic center-fire pistol that expels single or multiple projectiles by action of an explosion of a combustible material with a fixed magazine capacity in excess of 10 rounds;
4. A semi-automatic center-fire pistol that expels single or multiple projectiles by action of an explosion of a combustible material that has the ability to accept a detachable magazine and has one of the following characteristics: (i) a folding or telescoping stock; (ii) a thumbhole stock; (iii) a second handgrip or a protruding grip that can be held by the non-trigger hand; (iv) the capacity to accept a magazine that attaches to the pistol outside of the pistol grip; (v) a shroud that is attached to, or partially or completely encircles, the barrel and that permits the shooter to hold the pistol with the non-trigger hand without being burned; (vi) a manufactured weight of 50 ounces or more when the pistol is unloaded; (vii) a threaded barrel capable of accepting (a) a silencer, (b) a flash suppressor, (c) a barrel extender, or (d) a forward handgrip; or (viii) any characteristic of like kind as enumerated in clauses (i) through (vii);
5. A shotgun with a revolving cylinder that expels single or multiple projectiles by action of an explosion of a combustible material; or
6. A semi-automatic shotgun that expels single or multiple projectiles by action of an explosion of a combustible material that has one of the following characteristics: (i) a folding or telescoping stock, (ii) a thumbhole stock, (iii) a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the shotgun, (iv) the ability to accept a detachable magazine, (v) a fixed magazine capacity in excess of seven rounds, or (vi) any characteristic of like kind as enumerated in clauses (i) through (v).
There is no way in hell this will survive a court challenge, but it shows you what the fascist/socialist party is "gunning" for. Your complete disarmament and dependency on them.
#1
Mini store business in WV, KY and NC gonna be brisk.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/03/2019 9:24
Comments ||
Top||
#2
And don't forget plastic straws...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/03/2019 9:25
Comments ||
Top||
#3
It's all about setting up a cordon around the Imperial Capitol. That can work both ways.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/03/2019 9:30
Comments ||
Top||
#4
"Your honor, my personal defense weapon does not expel projectiles by action of an explosion of a combustible material. Y'see, this here innovative design simply propels a lathed piece of metal using simple expansion of gasses. The audible boom is also not an explosion, Sir. Doesn't happen when no one's around t' hear it. I swear."
#10
we'll sic SWAT teams on you and your family and your businesses!
That won't be the local sheriff. He and his deputies want to go home that night and walk back to their cars in the morning to drive to work.
They'll have to put together a state team. That might work one or two times. Then there be the inevitable Concord Bridge incident. The folks in Richmond will panic and activate the National Guard. Only to find out they are gun owners as well. Then watch the idiots call upon the President to send federal troops in. I could hear Trumping laughing already from here.
[ThePrint.in] Modi's new love: Fundamental duties Indira Gandhi inserted in Constitution during Emergency
I purposely chose a totally leftist libtard opinion site, to show the sort of restive distrust for everything Modi in these people. That and loathing, like the American left has for Trump. But in India they have to couch that hatred in clever sounding leftSpeak like 'Right-wing tendencies', and 'ultra-nationalism', or 'totalitarian'.
They mention the word 'fascist' irresponsibly and they're toast. The Govt won't do much, no. The public themselves shall torch their offices, smash their cars and kidnap their cats. And the police will be called to save them from the people. Observe the polite circumlocution around something they are totally uncomfortable with, just can't openly say it. An acceptable level of public accountability wouldn't you say ?
I just posted this so people could see what some countries are doing to transform their social landscapes from hair-triggered, freebie loving, perpetually whining mobs into responsible citizens conscious of the value of their citizenships. The onslaught of faux-liberal globalist corruption of cultures must be met with a standard of nationalist fervor and responsible civic life. That's the idea anyway.
It's notable that at least some leaders are trying. In Poland, Italy, Hungary, India, Thailand, Japan, USA, Brazil... so many Govts that are being termed 'populist' by globalist lackeys. But they're not globalists, they're nationalist leaders. Of course, this wave began with Japan, just as the sun rises there.
Soon after his spectacular victory in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in Parliament that there was a need for a 'paradigm shift' in India - from the centrality of fundamental rights to the fundamental duties. Many in media, Parliament, and among the common public saw the statement in a positive light and found nothing controversial: Modi was most likely rendering a version of John F. Kennedy's 'ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country'.
Then it was reported that the Ministry of Human Resource Development has sent a letter to all institutes of higher education, laying out the guidelines on how to celebrate Constitution Day. What is striking about the letter is its repeated focus on fundamental duties for this year's celebration. But this is not a one-off incident. There was a letter sent out in 2016 too wherein fundamental duties were similarly given special attention. It is quite clear that Modi and the state apparatus under him seem to believe that the thrust of constitutional education and constitutional discourse must be centred around fundamental duties.
I'll skip a bit.
Modi's citation of M.K. Gandhi in The New York Times article to support his emphasis on 'duties' is indeed correct. However, Gandhian thinking on rights and duties represents only a sliver of India's constitutional tradition. Most of Indian constitutional thinking, forged in the crucible of our freedom movement, emphasized rights and not duties.
Apart from one or two instances where members of the Constituent Assembly echoed Gandhi's idea on rights and duties, we find no evidence that remotely suggests that the framers of our Constitution seriously considered adopting something that resembled fundamental duties. While they might have had moral and political convictions about the links between rights and duties, they did not find it appropriate for these to be encoded into the Indian Constitution. Fundamental rights were given the most emphasis.
And here it is... Authoritarian regimes emphasize duties over rights
This is not to say the idea that citizens must perform certain duties towards their fellow citizens and society is not important. A lot of what we have in our fundamental duties chapter is laudable and must be aspired to. However, when political leaders and the state equate duties with rights, or worse, elevate the former over the latter, alarms bells should ring, especially when this happens in a political ambience flush with majoritarianism and under an authoritarian leader.
But why would the Modi government want us to pay less focus on rights to freedom, equality, non-discrimination, minority welfare, etc and instead obsess over our fundamental duties inserted during Indira Gandhi's Emergency? Well, authoritarian regimes know that they can profit immensely from such a 'paradigm shift'.
First, this shift allows the state to erect a mask over violations of citizen's rights. When citizens are exclusively concerned about the performance of duties, issues of rights are relegated to the fringes of their attention. We would focus on state-assigned homework to ensure our streets are swachh (clean) and remain oblivious to the rights of manual scavengers.
By using the language of 'duties', any call for accountability of state action that violates rights can be dismissed as a form of selfishness: 'You keep talking of rights but what about your duties' was something that was heard during the JNU-Kanhaiya Kumar episode. Kanhaiya Kumar is a Marxist activist.
The students' claims to right of free expression and protection against state violence were responded with some form of 'you are a student. It is your duty to study, not protest'. But God forbid ! A student... study ?!
A republic that is brainwashed into thinking that fundamental duties are the crème of the Constitution, can slowly begin to worship the very concept of duty itself - even if this duty has nothing to do with the actual content in the chapter on fundamental duties in the Constitution.
The BJP government is stellar at handpicking certain fringes of India's constitutional tradition that it finds agreeable and dressing them up as the Constitution's core. It performs fancy footwork around India's constitutional and political history to dazzle the citizenry into confusion about the republic's founding ideals. The citizenry, according to Marxists being dolts who are meant to be dazzled, seduced, entrapped, and 'managed' to death. They cannot have their own convictions, surely ? They haven't even read the Manifesto or smoked pot !
The author is the senior associate editor for Constitutional and Civic Citizenship at the Centre for Law and Policy Research, Bengaluru ... An incosequential dweeb really.
[Rudaw] Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS) bully boyz launched two attacks in Iraq’s Diyala province on Sunday night, killing an Iraqi soldier and two Death Eaters of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), known in Arabic as Hashd al-Shaabi.
In one attack the bully boyz launched a three-pronged mortar attack on an Iraqi army observation post in the village of Subaidi in Jalawla, killing one soldier and wounding two others, according to a Peshmerga official in the region.
"After the mortars were fired, festivities erupted between the attacking bully boyz and the Iraqi army," Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed Mustafa of the Peshmerga intelligence unit told Rudaw. "A [mortar] targeted the Iraqi army killing a soldier and wounding two others."
ISIS also attacked a PMF base in the town of Naftkhana, eastern Diyala province, killing two Death Eaters and wounding five more.
The PMF media office tweeted a 30-second video of the ensuing shootout, saying its fighters defeated a "massive ISIS attack".
Sunday night’s duel assault come just two days after ISIS bully boyz launched similar surprise attacks in Diyala’s Kolajo sub-district, killing a Peshmerga commander and two of his soldiers.
Located in Kifri, south of Kirkuk, ... a thick stew of Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, and probably Antarcticans, all of them mutually hostile most of the time... Kolajo has been attacked by ISIS sleeper cells multiple times. It is regarded as a disputed area between both Erbil and Baghdad.
The disputed territories have become a hotspot for ISIS activity amid a security vacuum.
A number of suspected ISIS fighters were arrested at the Iraq-Syria border last month, prompting the deployment of additional Iraqi troops to boost security.
The latest Pentagon inspector general report covering July 1 to Oct 25 said ISIS has continued to cement and expand its command and control structure in Iraq, enabling the group to stage more attacks.
"ISIS in Iraq conducted both attacks of opportunity, such as improvised bombs and hit-and-run attacks, and attacks designed to intimidate or gain influence, such as liquidations, kidnappings, and sniper attacks," the report read, citing the Combined Joint Task Force‐OIR (CJTF-OIR) which leads the fights against ISIS.
According to CJTF-OIR, 124 clearance operations were conducted against ISIS during the reporting period, in which Iraqi forces killed approximately 13 ISIS fighters and captured 123.
"Diyala province and areas of southeastern Nineveh province, in particular, experienced increased ISIS activity, while ISIS activity in Anbar, Kirkuk, and Salah ad Din provinces had subsided," the report said.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/03/2019
07:55 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[11 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
[SkyNews] The area has come under attack over the past year from suspected jihadist groups with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... At least 14 people including teenagers have been rubbed out at a church in Burkina Faso ...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and will leave office feet first, one way or the other... during Sunday mass.
Several other people were maimed in the attack which took place in the village of Foutouri in the Est region of the country.
The identity of the button men is not yet clear but the area has come under attack over the past year from suspected jihadist groups with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State.
Burkina Faso President Roch Marc Christian Kabore tweeted: "I condemn the barbaric attack against the Protestant Church of Hantoukoura in the department of Foutouri, which left 14 dead and several maimed.
"I offer my deepest condolences to the bereaved families and wish a speedy recovery to the maimed."
An Islamist insurgency in Burkina Faso this year has ignited ethnic and religious tensions, leaving large parts of the country ungovernable, especially in northern areas bordering Mali.
Last month, button men opened fire on a convoy of buses carrying mine workers in the Est region, killing 39 people.
MORE FROM BURKINA FASO
The timing of Sunday's incident, during hours of worship, mirrors other attacks on Christians this year - a new phenomenon in a West African country that has long prided itself on its religious tolerance.
Burkina Faso was once a pocket of calm in the region, but the past year's violence has killed hundreds and forced nearly a million people from their homes.
[Book Intro] Historical Research all to often resembles diamond mining. Great effort is needed to sift through vast amounts of material to find a few gems. Happily, the source of this book was a rich vein lying just under the surfact of the Library of Congress Newspapers and Periodicals Reading Room among the microfilm rolls of newspapers and records.
The National Tribune lay there quietly, not much disturbed by other miners of history, all but forgotten. This weekly publication was the ancestor of the Stars and Stripes, the service newspaper of the United States Armed Forces, founded in 1877 "to secure to soldiers and sailors their rights...."
Later the Tribune become known for its regular feature. "Fighting Them Over: What Our Veterans Have to Say About Their Old Campaigns," which solicited memoirs from veterans of all ranks and backgrounds. This column established the National Tribune as a forum for discussion, debate, and reminiscence for veterans around the country, eventually becoming the official paper of the Grand Army of the Republic."
This feature is a practically unknown treasure trove of firsthand accounts of America's bloodiest war, the struggle that defined the United States as a nation. Within this trove are the serialized reminiscences of the Chief Scout of the Army of the Potomac, Judson Knight, the the "Fighting Them Over Again" feature, which this book presents for the first time.
The brilliant Col. George H. Sharpe, 120th New York Volunteers created American all-source military intelligence as Chief of the Bureau of Military Information (BMI) for the Army of the Potomac. He became one of Grant's favored family of generals. Judson Knight always referred to him with respect.
[Mil.com] West Point Cadet Daine Van de Wall, the son of immigrants from the Netherlands and "First Captain" of the Corps of Cadets, has been chosen for a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to study at the University of Oxford. Statue of Cecil Rhodes in the garden of the Kimberley Club, Kimberley, SA.
Last year, two members of the Air Force Academy were selected as Rhodes Scholars. But Van de Wall, who intends to become an infantry officer, was the only one from a service academy to be chosen for the coveted award earlier this month.
"Service means a lot to me, specifically having parents who are immigrants coming over here and just being welcomed into the United States of America," Van de Wall, a member of the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society, said in an academy news release.
"My parents had the privilege to become naturalized citizens here a few years ago. Now, what it means to me to serve is really just to give back and have the opportunity to thank America for everything it's done for me," he added.
Related: McSally to Service Academies: Stop Putting 19-Year-Olds in Charge of 18-Year-Olds
Van de Wall, of West Friendship, Maryland, was among nearly half of this year's 32 recipients of Rhodes Scholarships who are first-generation Americans, according to the Rhodes Trust.
For the third consecutive year, the majority of the recipients were minorities, and for the first time those selected included a transgender woman.
This year's recipients "once again reflect the extraordinary diversity that characterizes and strengthens the United States," Elliot F. Gerson, American Secretary of the Rhodes Trust, said in a statement. "They will go to Oxford in September 2020 to study in fields broadly across the social, biological and physical sciences, and in the humanities."
The Rhodes Trust pays all college and university fees, and provides a stipend to cover expenses while in residence in Oxford.
The scholarships were created in 1902 by the will of Cecil Rhodes, the controversial diamond mine magnate and British imperialist who was prime minister of the Cape Colony in southern Africa in the 1890s.
Van de Wall, a systems and decisions science major, said he intends to pursue a Master of Philosophy in international relations at Oxford. A Dutchman, Rhodes must be pleased.
As first captain and brigade commander for 4,400 cadets, Van de Wall will have the honor of leading the Corps of Cadets onto the field Dec. 14 at Philadelphia's Lincoln Financial Field for the 120th Army-Navy football game.
"The role of the First Captain is to lead the course," Van de Wall said in the academy release. "I'm ultimately responsible for the performance of the Corps of Cadets. My job is to come up with the objectives we're trying to reach and come up with a vision for how we're going to get there."
.....the BBC has spent £10m of our money putting together a farrago of exaggerations and smears about this great man." Peter Godwin said of the film that "it feels like a work overwhelmingly informed by malice, consistently seizing on the very worst interpretation of the man without really attempting to get under his skin. Rhodes was no 19th-century Hitler. He wasn't so much a freak as a man of his time."
#4
Heh, forces. I see I'm not the only one who picked up on that.
He wasn't so much a freak as a man of his time.
This is something that really annoys me about today's progressives/activists/morons - a total unawareness of any historical context whatsoever.
Person X was bad because he kicked a dog.
Yeah, but the dog was biting his leg at the time.
It doesn't matter. Kicking dogs is bad.
[WSJ] As satisfying as it may be to see some of the sanctimonious elitists knocked off their lofty perches and forced to live among the peasants, it is probably better to keep the disease clustered in one place rather than spread it throughout the country where it might take root and grow. The government always grows; it never shrinks. Although I can see some potential benefits such as weakening the D.C. inbred culture and forcing some of the bureaucrats to see how the people live and the impacts their agencies have on the people.
Progressives dream of making the District of Columbia into a state, but now a pair of Republican senators have the same vision reflected through a funhouse mirror. The Helping Infrastructure Restore the Economy Act would effectively transform 10 states into D.C. by moving at least 90% of jobs from 10 executive departments out of Washington and into "economically distressed regions" across the country.
The bill's sponsors, Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, would send the Agriculture and Education departments to their respective states. Eight other federal departments and most nondepartment agencies would also be dispersed throughout the land, often to places intended to suit their functions - for example, the Transportation Department would be sent to Michigan to be near the auto industry.
Continued on Page 49
#1
Distributed systems make good sense. What doesn't make good sense is the absurd inefficiency, duplication and waste we have now. The "diplomats" and "national security officials" whining at the shits how hearings gave anyone actually paying attention a master class in where to cut.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/03/2019 7:13
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Given that is what pols have done forever (since WWII) with military bases why do you think this piece is appearing now? The Swamp is getting itchy.
Watch the fun when the old Base Closure time comes around. Move those department and agencies out the the DC circus and them states will be very very reluctant to send them back.
BTW, my state is a NIMBY state. Everything others don't want in theirs, they send here. Store nuclear waste? Why not. Provide the Air Force with bases to practice supersonic training? Why not. Practice IRBM intercepts? Why not.
#4
The real problem is the near complete inability to terminate the employment of Federal workers. Fix that and this shit won't be necessary. If Republicans really had this 'visceral desire for revenge', moving the shells around the table becomes unnecessary.
#5
I can recall a time (perhaps it's that way still) when American Federation of Government Employees grievances were oftentimes settled via monetary awards (some large - some small) as opposed to costly litigation.
An entire agency budget could be devastated by such 'un-programmed' cash award(s).
At least some agency 'end of year' annual bonuses were calculated on funds remaining at the end of the fiscal year. Can anyone see the built-in incentive for .... early pay-offs and settlements ?
#6
There should be no government unions. All government employees should be subject to USMCJ and have to compete for jobs and promotions via actual merit. Firing should take less than 2 hours. Failure to meet goals should be met with massive fines, pay cuts and other incentives.
#8
Term limit all government officials elected or not. Sunset all laws.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/03/2019 11:05
Comments ||
Top||
#9
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
12/03/2019 14:25
Comments ||
Top||
#10
...like the post offices that linger on in disuse in the internet age.
My small business did 60K worth of business with our small, "unused" two-person local post office last year. And that's just us. So.. FU WSG.
BTW, my state is a NIMBY state. Everything others don't want in theirs, they send here. Store nuclear waste? Why not. Provide the Air Force with bases to practice supersonic training? Why not. Practice IRBM intercepts? Why not.
MIAMI (Tribune News Service) ‐ An active-duty U.S. Marine was arrested last month when investigators say he landed in Haiti with boxes filled with guns, ammunition and body armor.
Federal prosecutors indicted Jacques Yves Sebastien Duroseau, a native of Haiti, in North Carolina last week on gun-smuggling charges. Duroseau, described in the indictment as a military firearms instructor, reportedly told investigators he brought the eight guns to the Caribbean country to teach marksmanship to the Haitian army.
Investigators say Duroseau bought some of the guns in Jacksonville, near Camp Lejeune in Eastern North Carolina.
An unidentified "known individual" told federal investigators that Duroseau "wanted to help Haiti and wants to become President of Haiti," according to the indictment filed Wednesday.
The unidentified person helped Duroseau check in to fly to Haiti from an airport in New Bern, N.C., according to the indictment. Duroseau had three boxes with five handguns and three military-style rifles and ammunition, which he declared when he checked the luggage, according to the indictment.
Haitian officials told the Miami Herald "that they became suspicious when they saw the three black cases, two of which were long. Most often the cases mean guns are inside."
Haitian police arrested Duroseau when he landed in the capital, Port-au-Prince, on Nov. 12, according to U.S. court filings.
#10
A Haitian, on crossing his Rubicon,
Sat weeping in Zion for Babylon.
"Bro, why did you go?"
"Doh! I really don't know...
But I wish I'd invaded Lake Woebegone."
[American Interest] Only five years ago, the general consensus among U.S. and European policy wonks was that, notwithstanding occasional glitches, the so-called liberal international order would remain the dominant global paradigm. For decades, the cognoscenti had assumed that export-driven modernization would eventually transform the likes of communist China into a mega-scale Japan, and that Russia, though authoritarian, would nonetheless adhere—at least in Europe—to the rules-based order. In hindsight it doesn’t really matter whether we fell victim to our own wishful thinking or refused to admit what was in front of us all the time—namely, a brief pause in great power competition followed by two great powers intent on revising the international order, in terms of both its principles and its geostrategic fault lines. We finally awoke to the geostrategic dimension of the ongoing rivalry when Russia seized Crimea and stoked a war in eastern Ukraine, and when China militarized the South China Sea by deploying military assets on its artificial islands. But the West has yet to fully grasp the realities of the system’s overall transformation, and especially its emerging axiology. The reason for the latter is not a lack of data points, but rather our inability to own up to the ideological shift underway within our own culture.
At the geostrategic level, the state of global affairs today is defined by two principal trends: the growing assertiveness of Russia and China, the two principal revisionist states; and the accelerating realignment of states worldwide in response to this rising pressure. More importantly, this challenge to the West runs in parallel with the apparent determination on the part of China to supplant democratic governance with a system built around authoritarianism, framed around a party elite. And for the first time the West seems too divided to launch a coherent response to this ideological pressure from abroad.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: 3dc ||
12/03/2019
05:52 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life,
#1
The left believes in driving everything to the lowest common denominator. That's the main problem.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/03/2019 6:41
Comments ||
Top||
#2
wordy and full of tangential points
the west is declining because
- the left is working to do that
- the left has taken much of the media, most of the Universities, and a good chunk of business leadership so they have become more effective in destroying our culture
Posted by: lord garth ||
12/03/2019 8:05
Comments ||
Top||
#3
I can summarize that article in one sentence "Affirmative Action Kills".
#4
The liberal order declined because the liberal intelligencia of the left didn't really believe in it. They were swooning over the Commies almost immediately.
#5
A good starting point for rebuilding Transatlantic relations would be to assess how far the United States and our European allies can progress toward defining a shared set of threats that our respective electorates would also recognize.
As long as our elites refuse to recognize the threat of unrestrained immigration from the Third World, there can be no agreement on a share set of threats.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/03/2019 11:44
Comments ||
Top||
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/03/2019 7:20
Comments ||
Top||
#2
The communications alone should be a train wreck
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/03/2019 8:14
Comments ||
Top||
#3
If we here at the Burg might make a suggestion:
In 2001, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) determined that English would, from then on, be the standardized language of air travel, and issued a directive that stated that all aviation personnel—pilots, flight crews, and air traffic controllers—must pass an English proficiency test. The mandatory compliance date was March 5, 2008. Not only must applicants know the appropriate aviation terminology in English, they must also be able to understand English instructions via radio, with no facial cues to prompt them. They also must learn to develop as benign an accent as possible, so that they are “intelligible to the aeronautical community.”
- how many inter-fleet collisions
- how many intra-fleet collisions
- how many collisions with observer vessels
- how many non-fleet rescues
- how many inter-fleet rescues
- how many intra-fleet rescues
- how many ships depart but don't make it back to port
- how many rescue vessels don't make it back to port
- how many observer vessels don't make it back to port
h/t Gates of Vienna
[BREITBART] Since 2016, there have been over 100 acts of reported violence and harassment perpetrated against conservatives on college campuses. Within the last few months, scores of additional instances of violence and harassment have been reported bringing the current total to 117 incidents.
Whether perpetrated by students or school faculty, instances of violence or threats against conservative students ‐ and sometimes even conservative professors ‐ are becoming commonplace on America’s college campuses. This trend is also expanding to the high school level.
Here is a list of incidents of violence and threats made against conservatives on campus, or made by leftists in academia, that have been reported within just the last few months.
#1
When I was in college in 1979 we threw beer bottles at Iranian students marching in support of the "revolution." The cops stood around and laughed. My how times have changed.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/03/2019 7:05
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Take a page out of their own books. Show a pattern of behavior (ie disparate outcome), make them (the university or college) take a mandatory time out. A semester or a year may have remarkable effect upon their behaviors. If it doesn't, take another page out of their book. Have a federal judge take over the administration of the organization.
h/t Gates of Vienna
[Daily Mail] The lawyer representing Hunter Biden in his paternity case abruptly withdrew on Monday while his client blew off the hearing, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal.
Biden, 49, was not in the second-floor courtroom in Batesville, Arkansas, when his attorney former Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel quit.
...In the hearing, Judge Don McSpadden said he would need at least three years of Biden's tax returns before he could reach a decision on monetary support for the child, whose sex has not been revealed.
Earlier this week, DailyMail.com revealed Biden filed a request to seal all financial records to spare himself public 'embarrassment' amid claims of 'significant debts'.
...In his motion to withdraw, McDaniel ‐ a former Arkansas Attorney General ‐ said Biden's personal lawyer had 'advised' him that he was being discharged.
'(C)ounsel will take all steps reasonably practical to protect defendant's interests and make every effort to ensure an efficient and judicious transition for new counsel.' McDaniel wrote.
Judge McSpadden also ordered Biden's team to provide Roberts with a valid address and phone number for him so papers can be properly served.
[Doug Ross@Journal] After his firing, disgraced former FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok filed a complaint with the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) asserting that his proposed termination was unwarranted.
In a recently released response dated August 8, 2018, OPR assistant director Candice M. Will outlined all of the facts underpinning Strzok's termination. Among the findings, Strzok was found to have:
• Engaged in "unprofessional conduct";
• Committed security violations related to the use of personal email for FBI business;
• Committed misconduct regarding a judical proceeding by failing to investigate obvious leads in the Clinton email scandal
The OPR's 27-page response contains several interesting revelations, few of which have been publicized thanks to our Democrat Party media, which has spent three solid years trying to overturn the results of the 2016 election.
Strzok and Hillary Clinton's never-before-seen emails
One of the most egregious activities Strzok appears to have engaged in is trying to sit on all of the missing Clinton emails, three months of which had never been seen before by government investigators. The Weiner/Abedin laptop seems to have contained most of the missing emails, which Hillary aide Huma Abedin had forwarded to the laptop she shared with ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner.
VILLA UNION, Mexico (AP) ‐ When dozens of pickup trucks crowded with armed men and mounted machine guns roared into Villa Union, residents of the small town near the U.S. border began to realize they were the target of a military-style invasion. What followed were hours-long gunbattles between a company-sized unit (estimates of its size range from 70 to 150 men) and state police that left 22 people dead. At least 50 homes and buildings riddled with bullet holes.
In the aftermath, authorities found 25 abandoned vehicles, some with machine-gun turrets and welded armoring; many had professionally printed placards identifying them as drug cartel vehicles. At least four had .50 caliber mounted machine guns. Resident claimed there were at least twice that many pickups, with some escaping.
Residents, most of whom asked that their names not be used for fear of reprisals, described how the day of terror unfolded.
Saturday, Nov. 30, 10:00 a.m.
Residents of the town of 6,000 were still recovering from Thanksgiving, when hundreds of relatives return from the United States to join their families in a border version of the holiday many here refer to as Dia del Pavo, or Turkey Day. Local business owners were enjoying good sales this year. After a period of terror between 2010 and 2013, the old Zetas Cartel that had dominated the town had been weakened, and violence had dropped.
A local roast chicken stand began heating up the rotisserie Saturday for the day’s business.
"Ever since Thursday night we had been having good sales; a lot of people showed up for Turkey Day," said an employee at a food stand in town’s main square.
[American Thinker] President Obama, who has yet to endorse anyone for president, has one piece of advice for voters: pick a Democrat, any Democrat, doesn't matter whom.
PJMedia captures the sense of panic in one of Obama's addresses to the barons of Silicon Valley:
"Everybody needs to chill out about the candidates, but gin up about the prospect of rallying behind whoever emerges from this process," Obama told the millionaire techies, according to far-left news channel CNN. "There will be differences" between them, he added, "but I want us to make sure that we keep in mind that, relative to the ultimate goal, which is to defeat a president and a party that has ... taken a sharp turn away from a lot of the core traditions and values and institutional commitments that built this country," those differences are "relatively minor."
"The field will narrow and there's going to be one person, and if that is not your perfect candidate and there are certain aspects of what they say that you don't agree with and you don't find them completely inspiring the way you'd like, I don't care," he went on to say. "Because the choice is so stark and the stakes are so high that you cannot afford to be ambivalent in this race."
This is nuts advice to that audience, given that several of the candidates are all but pledging to put those companies out of business. Should Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, go vote for Elizabeth Warren, who can't stop singling him out as her model bad guy? It's not exactly in tune with what Silicon Valley is up against. How about Bernie Sanders? Should they vote for a guy like that? Some will, but probably not the ones who know that the Sanders idea is annihilation.
What we have here is Obama being Obama, always looking out for himself.
#2
Obama's already pocketed his baksheesh: $68 million, for doing next to nothing, from a Silicon Valley bubble company whose business and valuation depend heavily on favorable regulatory treatment by the Feds.
Pure corruption. And he has the gall to lecture, and posture, and pontificate.
What a worthless piece of shit this little man is.
#6
I've long said part of the reason Reagan was so great was because Carter was so bad. Obama was worse than Carter but without the cold war the stakes are lower.
Thank god he used easily undone executive orders so often.
[Washington Examiner] Supporters of President Trump say they are eager for House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler to take the helm of impeachment proceedings this week, predicting he will harm the Democratic case against Trump.
Republicans close to and within the White House say the New York Democrat is vulnerable to claims of hypocrisy and is prone to lash out in an unbecoming manner. The inaugural Nadler-led impeachment hearing on Wednesday, they said, will feature law professors unlikely to reveal new facts about Trump pushing Ukraine to investigate Democrats.
"We’ve been anxiously awaiting the moment that Nadler takes over the impeachment inquiry," said a Republican close to Trump. "After [House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam] Schiff, he’s the most incompetent and unlikable Democrat member. [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi was unhappy with Schiff’s performance. Wait until she sees Nadler in action."
Nadler has clashed with Trump since the 1980s and '90s, when Trump nicknamed a then-overweight Nadler "fat Jerry." The men fought particularly over Trump’s efforts to develop land on the West Side of Manhattan along the Hudson River.
Republicans say Nadler’s liabilities were on display this year when he repeatedly referred to former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks as "Ms. Lewandowski" in a closed-door hearing, in what they consider a deliberate sexual smear against Hicks and Corey Lewandowski, Trump's former campaign manager.
And Republicans are dusting off Nadler’s words during the 1998 Bill Clinton impeachment. He said at the time "an impeachment of a president is an undoing of a national election," expressed concern about due process rights for Clinton, and opposed the release of Starr report material, despite now calling for the release of Mueller report redactions.
Attorney General Bill Barr is pushing back on IG Horowitz’s coming findings on the Trump-Russia investigation. Recent reports have said that Horowitz will find no political bias in the investigation despite ample evidence numerous high level officials had it out for Trump. As with the IG’s findings on the Hillary investigation, Horowitz’s standard is apparently an admission under oath and sealed in blood, as he found dozens of pieces of evidence of bias there but still concluded there was nothing conclusive.
Now, The Washington Post is saying Barr doesn’t agree with his coming characterizations.
#2
If the 2nd Horowitz report is like the 1st Horowitz report, it will be somewhat tepid and vanilla. We will have to wait until it is released. Durham has opened a criminal investigation(s), the results of which will be coming later.
Reports by WAPO, Lisa Page and the House Intelligence committee are said to be efforts to get out in front of the Horowitz FISA abuse report. Horowitz has little power to do anything but report, recommend and refer.
"Immediately after President Trump won election, opponents inaugurated what they called “The Resistance,” and they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver to sabotage the functioning of the Executive Branch and his Administration. Now, “resistance” is the language used to describe insurgency against rule imposed by an occupying military power. It obviously connotes -- It obviously connotes that the government is not legitimate. This is a very dangerous -- and indeed incendiary -- notion to import into the politics of a democratic republic. What it means is that, instead of viewing themselves as the “loyal opposition,” as opposing parties have done in this country for over 200 years, they essentially see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly elected government."
Durham, Barr, the courts and the people will have the final word.
[Khaama] General Scott Millar, the commander of US and Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan, together with Assadullah Khalid, the acting Defense Minister of Afghanistan travelled to the northern Jawzjan province on Monday to meet Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, the first deputy of National Unity Government and the head of Junbish political party and have discussed the security and election issues, sources confirmed.
Controversial statements about this visit have been reported by the news wire services and some political experts believe the government had specific messages to Gen. Dostum through this security delegation.
Assadullah Khalid had a message from the government to General Abdul Rashid Dostum saying to help in stopping the demonstrations and to reopening IEC offices in the northern provinces, a source told Khaama Press.
Bashir Ahmad Tayanj, the ex-parliamentarian speaking with Khaama Press confirmed that election issues have been discussed at the margin of the meeting.
"The main purpose of this visit was to discuss the security issues of northern provinces, however, the elections issues have also been discussed at the margin, Tayanj told Khaama Press.
[NewYorkTimes] Jeffrey Epstein, Blackmail and a Lucrative ‘Hot List’: A shadowy hacker claimed to have the financier’s sex tapes. Two top lawyers wondered: What would the men in those videos pay to keep them secret?
#1
Note that this is the Times' lawyers' version of what went down. They make themselves, naturally, look like heroes of probity and superior street smarts, skepticism and caution.
Which raises a questionL why the f--- didn't these brilliant gumshoes see through the bullshit-on-stilts that was Russiagate?
[Libya Observer] al-Jalaa Hospital in Benghazi has reported that one of its doctors was hit by a random bullet in al-Kish area.
The hospital's media office said Sunday that Dr. Azza al-Jarari suffered a minor head injury as a result of a random shooting in the area.
In recent months, the hospital has recorded an increase in the number of casualties as a result of indiscriminate bullets and violent quarrels in Benghazi that sometimes they reach dozens of cases per day.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/03/2019
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under: Arab Spring
[DW] A German court has ruled that an election campaign poster saying "Migration kills!" is partly accurate and does not incite racial hatred. The poster was part of the campaign of the extreme-right NPD party.
A German judge ruled that an election campaign poster reading "Migration kills!" was a partly accurate description of reality and does not incite racial hatred.
The decision was made in the city of Giessen near Frankfurt, according to German media outlets the Legal Tribune Online and the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland.
The election poster was commissioned by the National Democratic Party (NPD), a far-right nationalistic political party often described as "neo-Nazi ...adherents of a philosophy that was seen even at the time as pure evil, which makes them either consciously and purely evil, or attention-seeking ratbags. Pick one, or both.... ." The NDP has no elected members in any regional parliament, the Bundestag or the Europe ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... an Parliament.
The ruling came after the party sued the state of Hesse earlier this year because the mayor of the small town of Ranstadt blocked the NDP from displaying the posters.
The campaign poster was used ahead of the European parliamentary elections earlier in 2019. In full, it reads: "Stop the invasion: Migration kills!"
JUDGE: IMMIGRATION COULD LEAD TO 'DEATH OF GERMAN CULTURE'
Judge Andreas Hofer, who made the decision, cited "historical movements of people" from 5,000 years ago to the present day that directly led to "death and ruin," including the expulsion of the Israelites from Egypt and the colonization of the Americas. On that basis, he said that the poster "at least partly reflected reality."
Hofer had previously spoken negatively about the state of immigration in Germany, and in 2015, he said that "abstractly, too much migration in the form of immigration to Germany could lead to the death of German culture," according to media reports.
He alone made the court ruling that the poster was at least partly accurate. The August ruling can be appealed.
[Libya Observer] Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... has summoned the Speaker of House Representatives (HoR) Aqila Saleh to inform him of a new plot that aims to withdraw the Arab, African and Islamic World recognition of the UN-backed Presidential Council, according to Libya al-Ahrar TV Channel.
At least it’s not a secret plot. Those are the worst.
The channel reported reliable sources as saying that the plot includes asking Tobruk-based HoR to withdraw confidence from the Presidential Council, then asking the Arab League
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
12/03/2019
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under: Arab Spring
[DAWN] Malta’s Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, under fire over his handling of the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, said on Sunday he would step down after his replacement is chosen in January.
Muscat declined to make a link with Caruana Galizia’s 2017 murder, saying in a televised address that he was resigning "as this is what needs to be done." The announcement came after two weeks of mounting pressure and popular protests calling for Muscat to quit for his handling of the probe into Caruana Galizia’s boom-mobile killing.
Muscat said he would resign after his successor is chosen by January 12.
Earlier Sunday, the Labour leader got the unanimous backing of part MPs at an emergency meeting called a day after tycoon Yorgen Fenech was charged with complicity in the murder. A court has also frozen Fenech’s assets.
The investigation has rocked the southern Mediterranean island, reaching the highest echelons of government.
Critics including members of Caruana Galizia’s family have accused Muscat, 45, of protecting those involved in murdering the popular journalist and blogger who exposed cronyism and sleaze within the tiny country’s political and business elite.
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Russian Air Force has conducted dozens of Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s over the Idlib Governorate these past 24 hours, as their warplanes continue to target areas controlled by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else ...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State... and their jihadist allies.
According to a field report from nearby Hama, the Russian Air Force began the day by targeting the jihadist positions inside the southern part of Idlib.
These strikes would result in several powerful explosions around the towns of Kafr Nabl, Ma’arat al-Nu’man, and Kafr Sijnah.
More Russian airstrikes were reported inside the villages of al-Haraki, Farwan, al-Sayyadi, al-Kinays, Tal Kursiyan, al-Barsah, Hish, Halbah, and Rakaya.
This latest wave of airstrikes by the Russian Air Force comes just two days after the jihadist rebels launched an offensive to capture the town of ’Aajaz and its surroundings in southeastern Idlib.
While the jihadist rebels were initially successful, the Syrian Army was able to reverse these gains on Sunday when they launched a big counter-offensive.
NEW: Fmr. President Carter was admitted to a hospital this past weekend for treatment for a urinary tract infection, spokesperson says: "He is feeling better and looks forward to returning home soon."
[DAWN] Arakan-Rohingya Salvation Army stages vicious attacks in the name of Islam, Burma kicks Islam out. My sympathy meter appears to be stuck on zero. Moslems aren't stabbing people to death on bridges in Rangoon, are they?
Posted by: Fred ||
12/03/2019
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under: Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army
[TheFederalist] The ACLU recently awarded Brett Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford. It is unclear why politicians and pundits still claim to believe Ford, given the lack of evidence in support of her serious accusations.
#1
Read the 21 and tell us your favorites - pick three.
I'll go first:
#5. Ford’s Father Supported Kavanaugh’s Confirmation
"Ralph Blasey, Ford’s father, went out of his way to offer to Ed Kavanaugh his support of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, according to multiple people familiar with the conversation that took place at Burning Tree Club in Bethesda, Maryland. “I’m glad Brett was confirmed,” Ralph Blasey told Ed Kavanaugh, shaking his hand. Blasey added that the ordeal had been tough for both families. ...It wasn’t just Ford’s father. ...the D.C.-based family and friends of Ford’s quietly apologized to friends and family of Kavanaugh, even as the toxic political environment made it punitive for them to speak up publicly."
15. False Claims Were Made about Ford’s Inability to Fly
This is the individual whose lawyers claimed she couldn't fly to DC because of her fear of flying-- and who then flew on a private jet owned by a Silicon Valley billionaire, along with that person (Pincus iirc) and two other leftist scumbag billionaires (Hoffman, Sandberg).
This is the individual who routinely flies all over the Pacific for her "surf vacations." What a lying sack of shit.
18. Ford’s Attorney Admitted a Motive of Desiring an Asterisk by Kavanaugh’s Name
Busted. Motive for lying. Means and opportunity as well. So f---ing obvious.
Why is this woman not in prison?
Shame on this country's leadership.
Shame on us, for tolerating this carnival of defamation, perjury, witness-tampering, extortion and attempts to bribe congressmen.
#3
3. Friends Pressured Keyser to Change Her Story
There is an obvious leftist agenda at work here.
The leftist goal is to subvert the truth with lies in order to gain power to achieve their perverse goals.
After OJ Simpson killed his ex-wife and her lover in a jealous rage he was crushed with guilt and afraid of being exposed and humiliated in public.
But a dream team of lawyers came in and convinced him he was innocent and spared him of public humiliation by making a mockery of the prosecution.
Blasey Ford must have been jealous of Kavanaugh and somehow triggered.
Maybe she had a crush on him or maybe she was just projecting on him another failed relationship.
So Blasey Ford got together with a dream team of left activists and although initially hesitant the activists were able to brainwash her into the righteousness of her cause to be willing to come forward as a public victim that the left could worship as an underdog hero taking on the abusive powers of men in government.
To expose the lefts hypocrisy and agenda compare how the female accusers of President Clinton were treated.
The left destroyed the real victims of President Clinton and instead bestowed victim-hood on Hillary after the Lewinsky scandal.
Weinstein and Epstein were never treated as criminals because they were being used by the left and because of his link to important figures like Bill Clinton.
But as soon as the left could blame Alex Acosta for Epstein's "get out of jail" they could spin the story from themselves to Trump since Alex was his labor secretary.
So the only truth the left knows is the truth they are trying to subvert with their lies with impunity.
[[Jpost] The IDF, Shin Bet, Border Police and Israeli Police forces arrested 11 wanted suspects for involvement in terrorist activities and violent disruptions against civilians and security forces in the West Bank overnight, the IDF said on Monday. The suspects were brought in for interrogation.
[ALMASDARNEWS] The official media wing of the Ansarallah forces released a new photo on Monday that showed the large spy plane that was shot down over Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of... this past weekend.
According to the Ansarallah forces, the Chinese-made spy drone was fly over their positions in the Huran area before their troops shot down the reconnaissance aircraft.
The scenes showed the wreckage of the enemy plane after it crashed and the impact of the strike that forced it to fall into a strong scene of the Yemeni air defenses in confronting any kind of hostile flight in Yemeni airspace.
In footage released by the Ansarallah media wing, their forces can be seen dismantling the parts of the plane to take advantage of them.
The plane, manufactured by a Chinese company in 2012, is nine meters long and weighs 360 kg ‐ carrying 200 kg of weapons and sensors and can fly in the sky for 20 hours continuously, according to al-Masirah TV.
The Ansarallah forces announced on Saturday the downing of a reconnaissance aircraft from the Saudi-led Coalition in the Hajjah Governorate near the Saudi border.
"The Yemeni air defenses managed to shoot down a Chinese-made Caig Wing Loong reconnaissance aircraft in the Huran District of the Hajjah Governorate," Brigadier Yahya Serai, a front man for the Yemeni armed forces loyal to Ansarallah, said in a brief statement on his Twitter account .
He explained that "the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile and will be revealed later."
[ALMASDARNEWS] A new video posted by Ruptly on Sunday showed the chemical weapons ...have not been used since WWI except for in Iraq, by the late, unlamented Saddam Hussein and in Syria, but really, honest, not by the Syrian government. And in Germany in WWII, but that was against civilians. Lots of them, just one of many reasons Hitler's also late and unlamented... site inside the town of Douma.
This location is currently at the center of whistleblower allegations surrounding a concealed report by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
On 7th of April 2018 murderous Moslems in the area claimed that the Syrian government carried out a deadly chemical attack in Douma. The allegation of chemical weapon use by the Syrian government prompted Britannia, La Belle France and the United States to bomb targets they said were used as depots for chemical weapons.
Footage shows inside the clinic where the victims of the alleged attack were treated and various battle-scarred parts of the town as well as traffic on its streets.
Russia’s envoy to the OPCW stated in July 2019 that "in Douma, a provocation was thoroughly orchestrated and implemented," in line with Russian and Syrian allegations that the attack was staged to justify Western military intervention.
Syria and Russia allege that the OPCW’s March report was edited to make the evidence of the attack seem more conclusive and justify the Western missile strikes.
Leaked emails from two scientists employed by the OPCW have emerged since the incident to indicate that the organization misrepresented facts and simplified conclusions in its final report, published in March 2019, on the alleged use of chemical weapons in the town near Damascus in April 2018.
OPCW director-general Fernando Arias has however defended the report calling its conclusions "independent and professional."
[HOTAIR] Are we really still referring to South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg ...the testicleless mayor of South Bend, Indiana, since 2012. Buttigieg graduated from Harvard College and, on a Rhodes Scholarship, from Pembroke College, Oxford. From 2007 to 2010, he worked at McKinsey and Company, a consulting firm. From 2009 to 2017 Buttigieg served as an intelligence officer in the United States Navy Reserve, attaining the rank of lieutenant and deploying to Afghanistan in 2014. Buttigieg was first elected mayor of South Bend in 2011 and was reelected in 2015. During his second term, he announced he was gay. Buttigieg also campaigned for Indiana state treasurer in 2010 and for chair of the Democratic National Committee in 2017, losing both elections. He is running for the Dem nomination in 2020 on the theory that being mayor of a nondescript medium sized city is qualification to run the country... as one of the "moderate" candidates in the Democratic primary? Because if so, he’s really doing his level best to shed that title and move into the socialist lane. Yesterday he was having a discussion with the Reverend William Barber when the subject of illegal immigration came up. Barber tossed out some seriously open borders style propositions and found a willing ear with Buttigieg.
First Barber asked if we shouldn’t stop "demonizing" illegal aliens. Mayor Pete didn’t just agree with him. He went one step further, saying "Yeah, I mean the uncomfortable reality is that undocumented folks are in many ways, like Social Security, subsidizing everybody else."
Posted by: Fred ||
12/03/2019
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[16 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
SS, Part 207.
This absurd comment -- "the uncomfortable reality is that undocumented folks are...subsidizing everybody else" -- shows how completely out of touch with reality our ridiculous political class is.
Got it? Illegals are subsidizing us.
Right.
Night = day.
Up = down.
Slavery = freedom.
Illegal alien carpetbaggers = Heroic Citizens.
#2
Allowing Illegals IS subsidising THEM.
Lower wages and higher rents make THEM richer and the vast majority of Americans poorer (and living in more danger of crime).
#3
I cannot blame Bloomberg for jumping into the race. At least he's somewhat sane.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
12/03/2019 5:44
Comments ||
Top||
#4
Mr. Bloomberg is in the race to beat Sanders and Warren, not Trump. It's self preservation for him and his caste. They're taking the neo-Bolsheviks as a serious threat.
#6
SS, continued. Supposedly smarty-pants Pete can't even do basic arithmetic. The illegals send billions of $ earned in the US out of this country every year - back to Mexico.
They are literally "subsidizing" the Mexican countryside and artificially propping up the Mexican economy - at the expense of the American communities that educate their children in the public schools, provide them healthcare through local ERs funded by Obamacare, and absorb the cost of other public services for them.
Including the cost of their Obamacare, we are now spending on the order of $100 billion so that these invaders can trash our low-end labor market and send almost the same amount of hard currency out of this country. That a US politician cannot see this basic equation or do this math should be enough reason to throw him out of office.
#10
And Porgy Tirebiter for VP. It's an all male ticket but what the heck?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/03/2019 11:16
Comments ||
Top||
#11
No opinions on Mexico Mr Buttigieg? A state that is so bad their citizens have to sneak across the border at great risk to earn enough money to survive? A state whose pro-oligarchy policies limit foreign investment that might help the situation while also ensuring that those forced to seek jobs in America come primarily from Mexico's Indigenous groups and not from those descended from Europeans?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/03/2019 12:29
Comments ||
Top||
#13
I'm coming to the thinking that the democrats actually all have a death wish, they are too cowardly to off themselves so they're trying to get us to wipe them out.
[DAWN] The government of Iraq’s Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi ended on Sunday after two months of violent unrest that has left more than 420 people dead and thousands mourning them in nationwide marches.
As anti-government demonstrators across the strife-torn country massed to honour the fallen activists, parliament met to accept the resignation which the 77-year-old had offered two days before.
While Abdel Mahdi stays on initially to lead a caretaker government, President Barham Saleh will now be asked to name a successor to face the challenge of resolving the political chaos that has engulfed the nation.
The protest movement is Iraq’s biggest since the US-led invasion of 2003 toppled Saddam Hussein and installed a democratic system in the oil-rich but poverty-plagued nation.
Tens of thousands have vented their anger at a governing class they despise as inept, corrupt and beholden to foreign powers, especially Iran, whose consulate in the city of Najaf was torched last Wednesday.
Some protesters cautiously welcomed the departure of the premier, who came to power just a year ago based on a shaky alliance between rival parties, but they demanded far more deep-rooted change. "Abdel Mahdi should go ‐ and so should parliament and the political parties and Iran!" said one young demonstrator in the capital.
Observers said Iraq’s fractured political scene will struggle to reach a consensus on a new premier.
With the parliament’s main Shia blocs "fragmented, no largest faction exists", wrote Dlawer Ala’Aldeen, president of the Arbil-based Middle East Research Institute.
Even if they agreed on a candidate, he or she would also need the backing of the emboldened street. "Demonstrators are hard to please," said Ala’Aldeen. "The carnival goes on and, meanwhile, violence continues." Just before the parliamentary session began, another protester was rubbed out in the capital, medical sources said.
But, in a victory for the movement, an Iraqi court sentenced a police officer to death after convicting him of killing demonstrators, the first such sentence in the two months of deadly civil unrest. The Kut criminal court sentenced the police major to be hanged and it jugged Maw! They're comin' to get me, Maw! a police lieutenant colonel for seven years over the deaths of seven protesters in the southern city on Nov 2, judicial sources said.
Iraq’s constitution has no provision for the resignation of a premier, and politician Sarkawt Shamsaddin said on Sunday that the body did not actually hold a vote.
"The speaker said that the Federal Court was consulted and the understanding is that [there is] no need to vote," he said. The speaker had then asked if any politician was against the resignation and "nobody objected".
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has reopened a humanitarian crossing with the Ottoman Turkish-backed gunnies in eastern Aleppo after the violence in the town of al-Bab subsided this week.
According to a military report, the Syrian Army reopened the Abu al-Zandin crossing for all civilians to leave and enter the bad boy-held al-Bab District of eastern Aleppo.
Previously, the crossing was closed due to the recent infighting between the Ottoman Turkish-backed gunnies inside al-Bab; however, it appears that the situation has calmed after a tense week.
[DAWN] In what appears to be an audacious kidnapping of 20-year-old female student in a busy commercial area of DHA, some five gunnies in a car intercepted her and her young friend, who were strolling along the road, fired multiple shots, left him maimed and took away the girl early on Sunday morning, officials and witnesses said.
The authorities are still clueless about the motive for and suspects involved in the act. The incident triggered fear and panic in the neighbourhood.
Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah and IG Dr Syed Kaleem Imam ordered fast-paced investigations into the alleged kidnapping, asking the authorities to use every possible channel and technology to arrest the culprits and recover the girl safely.
They assured the families of the two victims of their full support and cooperation.
"It was in the early hours of the day when a car intercepted the maiden of tender years who was walking on the island along the main road in DHA Bukhari Commercial area with a young man in his 20s," said an official at the Darakhshan cop shoppe.
"The two put up some resistance initially, but it did not last for long as one of the car occupants pulled out a pistol and fired multiple shots. The firing left the young man maimed who fell to the ground and the girl was whisked away by the men in the car. Some witnesses said there were five men and they noticed at least two gunnies among them."
The incident sparked panic and fear in the area, where a large number of people were present at the roadside eateries, most of them with families, enjoying the weekend.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/03/2019
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[10 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
It's mostly because they don't have good detectives in Pakistan, more like "armchair experts." I blame this on their culture.
[Libya Observer] Libyan Army Spokesman, Mohammed Gunouno has disclosed that their forces had destroyed an operation room run by "a gang of mercenaries" -according to him- in Qasr bin Ghashir town on Saturday.
Gunouno added in a press briefing Sunday that Haftar's forces kept tight-lipped about their casualties, "but our sources confirmed that the bodies of nine mercenaries had arrived at their field hospital," he said.
"The multinational gangs tried to advance towards Aziziyah in an attempt to cut off the roads between Gharyan city and Tripoli ...a confusing city, one end of which is located in Lebanon and the other end of which is the capital of Libya. Its chief distinction is being mentioned in the Marine Hymn... , but our forces were ready for them," he added.
He also pointed to the attack conducted by UAE-backed drones of Haftar on a neighbourhood in Swani district, which left dead and maimed.
BREAKING: International Criminal Court Declines to Prosecute Alleged Israeli War Crimes -- Decision is defeat for anti-Israel activists across the globe https://t.co/zGPLjrNR2m
The International Criminal Court on Monday declined to reopen an investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes stemming from a 2010 incident in which a Gaza-bound flotilla filled with militant anti-Israel agitators was intercepted by Israeli authorities, leading to a bloody confrontation.
The ICC's lead investigator declined to bow to pressure and reopen an investigation into the nearly decade-old confrontation between Israeli military personnel and activists aboard the Mavi Marmara, a flotilla that attempted to violently penetrate Israel's blockade on the Gaza Strip.
This is now the third time ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has declined to pursue war crimes charges against Israel.
I've watched this video many times now. And each time I do., I find it chilling. This is what Corbyn and his allies have unleashed, And even if/when he goes, it won't... https://t.co/4lCmicG19Q
[Libya Observer] Murzuq General Hospital has confirmed that it had received the bodies of nine children and two women, of Umm Al Aranib massacre carried out by Haftar's forces on Friday.
"The children were aged between a year and a half and 13 and one of the women was pregnant," the hospital stated.
The bodies were transferred Sunday morning to Sabha ...After the Libyan Civil War, Sabha grew in importance as a slave auctioning town. However, an investigation by the National Commission for Human Rights in Libya (NCHRL) revealed that while there was illegal slavery, reports were exaggerated, as slave auctions were rare and not made public. This was a great comfort to everyone but the slaves peddled in secret. The city was later seized by forces loyal to the Libyan National Army (LNA) and its leader Khalifa Haftar in January 2019, probably for its collection of MiG-25 aircraft.... Medical Center in preparation to refer the case to the relevant authorities in the city, according to the hospital.
The aircraft supporting Haftar struck a neighbourhood in Umm Al Aranib area last Friday, adding a new heinous crime to Haftar's record.
[Libya Observer] The Libyan Presidential Council has condemned the Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... on al-Swani in southern Tripoli ...a confusing city, one end of which is located in Lebanon and the other end of which is the capital of Libya. Its chief distinction is being mentioned in the Marine Hymn... on Sunday and the airstrikes prior to that on Um al-Aranib in southern Libya, which both caused civilian casualties.
In a statement on Monday, the Presidential Council said "those terrorist attacks are committed by war criminal Khalifa Haftar ...Self-proclaimed Field Marshal, served in the Libyan army under Muammar Qadaffy, and took part in the coup that brought Qadaffy to power in 1969. He became a prisoner of war in Chad in 1987. While held prisoner, he and his fellow officers formed a group hoping to overthrow Qadaffy, so it's kind of hard to describe him as a Qadaffy holdover. He was released around 1990 in a deal with the United States government and spent nearly two decades in the United States, gaining US citizenship. In 1993, while living in the United States, he was convicted in absentia of crimes against the Jamahiriya and sentenced to death. Haftar held a senior position in the anti-Qadaffy forces in the 2011 Libyan Civil War. In 2014 he was commander of the Libyan Army when the General National Congress (GNC) refused to give up power in accordance with its term of office. Haftar launched a campaign against the GNC and its Islamic fundamentalist allies. His campaign allowed elections to take place to replace the GNC, but then developed into a civil war. Guess you can't win them all... 's warplanes that are backed by foreign countries" and are part of the series of attacks on civilian residential neighborhoods and private as well as public properties in Tripoli, leading to civilian deaths and injuries.
The Presidential Council said Haftar forces' crimes violate all international laws and yet there are no deterrent actions by the international community against them.
"The lack of action against Haftar's forces by the international community has encouraged them to carry out such atrocities that amount to war crimes." It added, saying UNSMIL bears the blame for those continuing attacks as its verbal statements are of no use.
Haftar's warplanes struck a house in al-Sawani on Sunday, killing five and injuring 13, according to the Health Ministry.
Prior to this attack, Haftar's warplanes carried out airstrikes on a residential area in Um al-Aranib in southern Libya, killing 11 people from one family - nine children and two women - and two other people; foreign nationals.
[ALMASDARNEWS] Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Horror of Homs... sent a letter to Sadqi al-Maqat, a Syrian prisoner in an Israeli jail, after the latter refused to release him on condition that he did not return to the occupied Golan Heights.
The text of the letter reads begins: "To the heroic prisoner Sadqi al-Maqat." In nice script
"Your latest position, which came after unremitting attempts to release you, and ended up with a question and your choice between staying in Damascus and not returning to the Golan, which is closest to, or continuing your suffering in the occupation prisons and preferring detention than not returning to the Syrian Golan. The struggle that does not fade in the same instinct to fathers and pride and dignity, and the spirit of a great fighter pass the days do not get tired," the Syrian President said.
"As much as we were waiting for you to leave the prison and as much as we stood in respect of your refusal to go out on the terms of the occupier," Assad said.
"Your struggle, along with the sacrifices and epics that the heroes of the Syrian Arab Army have laid in the trenches of honor against the genuine enemy and against the proxy has become a light that guides the path for this and future generations," he continued. and a smiley emoji
Assad completed his message by promising to retake the occupied Golan Heights.
[BIZPACREVIEW] Among the reasons Democrats and their media sympathizers offer to show President Donald Trump ...Oh, noze! Not him!... ’s alleged "racism" is that he called Rep. The Ageless and Downright Brilliant Comrade Maxine Impeach 45! Waters ...U.S. Representative for California's 43rd congressional district, serving since 1991, a total of 28.00464 years. A member of the Democratic Party, she is the most senior of the twelve black women currently serving in the United States Congress, and a member and former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. Before becoming a member of Congress she served in the California Assembly, to which she was first elected back when Disco was in flower, in 1976, which would make it 43.00259 years. She has been a politician for virtually all her adult life. If she was a little brighter she'd be a Communist... , D-Calif., a "low IQ individual."
At a July 2018 rally in Montana, Trump said: "She is a low I.Q. individual, Comrade Maxine Waters. I said it the other day. I mean, honestly, she’s somewhere in the mid-60s, I believe that." And in June 2018, Trump tweeted: "Congresswoman Comrade Maxine Waters, an extraordinarily low IQ person, has become, together with Nancy San Fran Nan Pelosi Congresswoman-for-Life from the San Francisco Bay Area, born into a family of professional politicians. On-again-off-again Speaker of the House. It's not her fault when they lose, but it's her accomplishment when they win. Noted for her heavily botoxed grimace and occasional senior... uhhh... moments... , the Face of the Democrat Party. She has just called for harm to supporters, of which there are many, of the Make America Great Again movement. Be careful what you wish for Max!"
Trump’s tweet was in response to a fiery ...a single two-syllable word carrying connotations of both incoherence and viciousness. A fiery delivery implies an audience of rubes and yokels, preferably forming up into a mob... Water’s speech in which she urged a campaign of harassment against members of Trump’s cabinet: "Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere."
Now, Trump, of course, frequently calls people, politicians, policies, Democrats and many Republicans of all stripes and colors "dumb" or "stupid." A recent example occurred last month at a Minnesota campaign rally when Trump slammed (white) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "She’s either got one of two problems: she’s either really stupid or she’s really lost it, or maybe there’s a certain dishonesty there." In July, Trump called the (white) British Ambassador to the United States "a very stupid guy" for criticizing Trump in diplomatic cables published in a British newspaper.
#5
Well, remember these things. If someone who has never met you says you are a rayciss bigot Nazi, then you are. If a psychologist (not a psychiatrist, not licensed to practice) says someone she never met (let alone examined) says that person is clinically insane, then they are. If Dan Rather tells you it's false but accurate then it is. If a congressman tells you hearsay is superior to documented fact then it is. One could go on and on..
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/03/2019 6:48
Comments ||
Top||
#6
Oh, and the important one, the nation's foreign policy is best left to unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats. Only a dumb prole would think otherwise.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/03/2019 6:54
Comments ||
Top||
#7
Well, since Mad Max is black, she cannot be racist, no matter what she says.
Also, she criticized Dr. Carson, who is not only black, but a man, so she gets a pass.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
12/03/2019 7:33
Comments ||
Top||
#8
She's been in power so long she goes around saying whatever dumbass ideas pop into her head because she can get away with it and the dumbass reporters take her seriously. Nobody calls her on it, she is never held to account and she's too stupid to realize that she is an object of ridicule. She feels no shame because she has none.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/03/2019 11:02
Comments ||
Top||
#9
Are we certain Waters was actually elected by the citizen voters of this land? Has anyone looked into that?
[Babylon Bee] CAMBRIDGE, MA ‐ After Lisa Page finally spoke out against President Trump, masterfully painting herself as the target of Trump's oppression and misogyny, Harvard University quickly hired the former FBI lawyer to teach an upper-level course on how to turn yourself into the victim in any situation.
The course will cover various situations, from getting caught having an affair with a co-worker to conspiring to overthrow a republic, and teach students how to make themselves out to be the victim in any of these scenarios. "I feel disenfranchised!"
"The way Page had an affair and then conspired with her lover to sabotage a democratic election and THEN made herself out to be the victim -- that's the kind of expertise we look for here at our prestigious university," said a spokesperson. "This is the sort of 4D chess we need to teach our students."
Harvard staff praised Page for harnessing the left's hate against Trump and using it to generate sympathy for herself.
"See how she didn't take any responsibility for her wrongdoings, but instead managed to blame patriarchy, misogyny, and President Trump for everything? She's clearly a pro."
Disgraced congresswoman Katie Hill will co-teach the class.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/03/2019
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[18 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Night = day.
Up = down.
Conspirator to overthrow a president = victim of a conspiracy by said president.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
12/03/2019 12:23
Comments ||
Top||
#5
A drunk drives a car and hits three pedestrians and kills them. The driver pleads: " It wasn't me that did this, it was the car that did it." Seems similar to Page and Strzok's evil-doing. What are they going to do blame us for reading their messages?
"Can't anybody here play this game?" Just kidding.
Seriously, this has become like that Schroedinger's cat thing where you can't tell if the cat is alive or dead until you open the box, or in this case, read past the headline.
[ALMASDARNEWS] An improvised explosive device has gone off in front of a Russian armoured police vehicle in Syria, Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Monday.
According to the ministry’s statement, the incident occurred as a Russian-Turkish joint patrol conducted route reconnaissance some 1.5 kilometres to the west of a town in the Kobane district of Aleppo Governorate in northern Syria.
The three servicemen who were in the vehicle at the moment of the explosion sustained minor non-life-threatening injuries, the ministry added. There was some damage to the vehicle as well.
On 22 October, Turkey and Russia concluded a memorandum that detailed conditions for a peaceful withdrawal of Kurdish forces to a distance of 18.6 miles from the Turkish border. The 10-point document envisions regular joint patrol missions to ensure the implementation of the deal.
The adoption of the memorandum comes after a week-long military operation launched by Turkey on 9 October that sought to rid the region of the SDF, viewed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey due to its ties with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
[10 News] The San Diego FBI and prosecutors Monday announced a $5 million reward for a wanted terrorist.
According to the agency, Jehad Serwan Mostafa, 37, is a U.S citizen. Fix that, NOW
The FBI says Mostafa grew up in San Diego and, at some point, moved to Somalia and became a member of the al-Shabaab terrorist organization. Al-Awlaki recruit?
Al-Shabaab has committed several bombings and attacks in the Horn of Africa, killing hundreds, the FBI says.
The FBI’s Rewards for Justice Program is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to Mostafa's arrest or conviction in any country.
Mostafa is described as six feet, one inch tall, weighing approximately 170 pounds with blue eyes and a large scar on his right hand. He is also left-handed, the FBI says.
Anyone with information is asked to call the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate or the FBI at 1-800-CALLFBI or tips.fbi.gov .
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/03/2019
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[20 views]
Top|| File under: al-Shabaab (AQ)
[BIZPACREVIEW] Democratic gaffe machine Joe Biden continued his role as the unofficial chair of the Trump reelection campaign by making another epic blunder that underscores that someone should put a fork in him. Because he’s done. This time, Biden — who never met Kim Jong Un — claimed he “spent a lot of time” with the leader of North Korea.
Biden spouted the boldfaced lie during a campaign stop in Iowa on Saturday (Nov. 30). Joe bragged to a tiny roomful of supporters that authoritarian leaders like Kim Jong Un will never fool him because he knows who they are at their core, which is brutal dictators.
“You’re gonna have to assume that position from the moment they are sworn in on January the 20th and know the rest of the world knows that person — in this case, me — and that I know them,” Biden boasted.
Joe continued: “Putin has no illusions about whether I know him or not. Kim Jong Un is another person [who knows] whether I know him or not. The same with Xi Jinping. I’ve spent a lot of time with these folks. They know, they know [me],” Biden said.
Interesting images the public doesn’t generally get to see of an underground operation room of al-Qassam Brigades. The footage was a part of an @AJArabic documentary on the IDF’s 2018 Khan Yunis operation. #Gaza#Israelpic.twitter.com/lTRJjigssg
#5
We should home port two of those crappy littoral ships in Taiwan configured with the over the horizon naval strike missile. And two more in the Philippines, and Vietnam. They would be a cheap trip wire, with a serious counter punch.
Such a move would put China's navy on the horns of a dilemma if they wanted to start something.
An excellent article by Tzoreff and Schweitzer. The mostly absent al-Qassam in the recent clash against #Israel was peculiar. They not only abstained from helping PIJ but also all the other factions that were fighting. Even some salafist groups were launching rockets at #Israel. https://t.co/Bc2AfJuCaD
[DAWN] One Frontier Corps ...a provincial paramilitary force. Total manpower is about 80,000. They are tasked to help local law enforcement in the maintenance of law and order, and to carry out border patrol and a..the Antwerp-based Salafist organization that had campaigned to introduce Sharia law to Belgium before single-handedly making Belgium the highest per capita supplier of jihadis to Syria in Europe. There was a big trial in Antwerp in 2015, but most of those convicted were in absentia...nti-smuggling operations.... (FC) soldier was martyred and two others were maimed on Sunday in an exchange of fire with murderous Moslems after they raided an FC checkpost in North Wazoo, a statement by the military's media wing said.
According to a statement by Director General Inter Services Public Relations Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor, "murderous Moslems raided an FC post in North Waziristan district near the Pak-Afghan border".
"During the exchange of fire, two bad boyz were potted," said Maj Gen Ghafoor.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/03/2019
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under: TTP
Brilliant idea. Throw more Progressive money straight into the national economy without stopping to get yet another Democrat elected to anything.
[HOTAIR] It’s not going to happen this election cycle, however, there is speculation Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, Congressman Adam Schiff ...Showboating U.S. Representative for California's 28th congressional district since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, Schiff has served in Congress since 2001. He currently serves as the chairman of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. In a manner reminiscent of Joe McCarthy, on March 22, 2017, in a interview with Chuck Todd on MSNBC Schiff claimed there was “more than circumstantial evidence now” that Donald Trump's campaign colluded with Russia." Todd followed up by asking if he had seen direct evidence of collusion and Schiff responded that there was "evidence that is not circumstantial and is very much worthy of investigation... is looking towards higher office. The only question is how high. A new report from The Hill suggests Schiff has his eyes on either the Senate or a future residency in the White House.
Some Democrats see him as the natural heir to 86-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein ...Dem Senator-for-Life from Caliphornica. She has been a politician since about the time she was weaned. Feinstein was the author of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban, and tried it a second time in 2012. Feinstein has chaired the Select Committee on Intelligence since 2009. At age 80, Feinstein is the oldest currently serving United States Senator.... (D-Calif.); others say the 19-year Southern California congressman is a House guy through and through and could one day run to succeed Speaker Nancy San Fran Nan Pelosi Congresswoman-for-Life from the San Francisco Bay Area, born into a family of professional politicians. On-again-off-again Speaker of the House. It's not her fault when they lose, but it's her accomplishment when they win. Noted for her heavily botoxed grimace and occasional senior... uhhh... moments... (D-Calif.), his close ally. One of his House colleagues from the Golden State said she saw a president in the making as Schiff led the televised hearings these past two weeks.
"When we look at the characteristics of what we want to see in a president, it is somebody who is not going to lose composure because he’s been poked. And we’re seeing that on display from Adam Schiff every single day," said the California Democratic politician. "He’s not too vanilla. But I kind of want that now after Trump. We need boring; boring is good."
Schiff obviously isn’t boring but someone who appears to be doing his best to be a Very Serious Politician when he’s far from it. He proved it last week in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper where he spoke from both sides of his mouth on the impeachment question. Tapper asked Schiff directly if he believed President Donald Trump should be impeached and the answer was, "I want to discuss this with my constituents and my colleagues before I make a final judgment on it."
Posted by: Fred ||
12/03/2019
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[16 views]
Top|| File under:
#2
Works for me. doesn't even need to wear a clown mask to fit in with the rest of the candidates from the Party of Slavery, Treason and Corruption (TM).
#7
A story about a doofus politician based solely on speculation and his perceived worth as a Presidential candidate - that's a lotta worthless elements right there.
[ToloNews] A security source said the vehicle attacked belonged to NDS, but officials have not confirmed this.
Gunmen attacked an Afghan cops vehicle in Pul-e-Charkhi area in PD9 of Kabul, killing two security forces and wounding three others, Nasrat Rahimi, a front man for the Interior Ministry, confirmed.
The incident happened in the Yakatoot area in PD9 of Kabul city after button men opened fire on a security vehicle and then fled the area, Rahimi said.
The police are investigating the incident.
No group has grabbed credit for the attack.
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Russian combat robot, the Uranus-9, was recently photographed inside Syria, the Russian aviation publication Avia.Pro reported on Monday.
According to the publication, the Uranus-9 was seen near the front-lines in the northern region of Syria.
"Information about the appearance in Russia of the Russian combat robot ’Uranus-9’, capable of easily destroying enemy armored vehicles and gutting military aircraft, appeared long ago. However, some men learn by reading. A few learn by observation. The rest have to pee on the electric fence for themselves... it is reported that a unique robotic complex has been spotted in northern Syria. Judging by the photograph presented, the combat robot took an active part in military operations together with the Russian and Syrian military, including in repelling numerous attacks by bully boys," they said.
"At the moment, neither the place nor the date of the picture was made public, however, a number of sources say that the photo could have been taken in northern Syria, where this combat unit is used against holy warriors supported by the Ottoman Turkish army. Nevertheless, a number of other sources claim that we are talking about the testing period of the Russian combat robotic complex.
As pointed out by Avia.Pro, it is not clear when the photo was actually taken; however, it is believed to have been fairly recent, given the increased violence in the Idlib Governorate over the last two weeks.
"It should be noted that the Russian combat robotic complex Uranus-9 has in its arsenal a 30-mm automatic cannon 2A72, perfectly suitable for hitting unarmored and lightly armored vehicles, as well as air targets, and a set of four anti-tank guided missiles, which makes it formidable the adversary," Avia.Pro added.
#2
I think it's been used for two years now in Syria. They sold us two Uran-9s in 2016. I imagine we must have decked 'em up with flowers for use in parades. They are parked somewhere in Rajasthan.
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS/ISIS/IS/ISIS) carried out a new attack on Monday against the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) troops deployed to the eastern countryside the Homs Governorate, a source from the military told al-Masdar News this evening.
According to the source, the Islamic State began their attacks on Sunday when their bully boyz stormed the Syrian Army’s positions near the T-3 Pumping Station.
The source said while the Syrian Army was able to defeat the Islamic State attack, they suffered some casualties as a result of the fierce festivities.
On Monday, the Islamic State once again reemerged near the T-3 Pumping Station as they attacked the Syrian Army and NDF troops in this part of the Badiya al-Sham region of eastern Homs.
More festivities were reported at the Arwad Dam in northeastern Homs by the military source. The Islamic State reportedly tried to ambush the Syrian Army troops were deployed in the Arwad Dam area; however, the attack was foiled before the bully boyz could inflict any casualties within the military’s ranks.
In response to these latest attacks by the Islamic State, the Syrian Air Force has carried out several Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s over the Badiya al-Sham region, with a large number of their strikes concentrating on the terrorist group’s suspected positions in the mountains near al-Sukhnah.
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.
Sen. Kamala Harris is ending her presidential campaign.
[Politico] Kamala Harris is dropping out of the presidential race, she told staff on a call Tuesday. She will release a video momentarily announcing her plans.
[Forbes] George Pedersen cofounded his firm ManTech International back in 1968 with a single contract with the U.S. Navy, reportedly to build war-gaming models for the submarining community. Now the defense and intelligence contractor has 8,700 employees and nearly $2 billion in annual revenue. After a recent run-up in the stock, Pedersen is now a billionaire thanks to his stake in the Nasdaq-listed company. The 84-year-old owns a third of the firm, which has a market capitalization of $3.1 billion.
[News with Views] The plain, unvarnished truth is that public education is a shoddy, fraudulent piece of goods sold to the public at an astronomical price. It’s time the American consumer knew the extent of the fraud which is victimizing millions of children each year. ‐Samuel Blumenfeld
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling 
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling 
[Book Intro] Historical Research all to often resembles diamond mining. Great effort is needed to sift through vast amounts of material to find a few gems. Happily, the source of this book was a rich vein lying just under the surfact of the Library of Congress Newspapers and Periodicals Reading Room among the microfilm rolls of newspapers and records.
[Mil.com] West Point Cadet Daine Van de Wall, the son of immigrants from the Netherlands and "First Captain" of the Corps of Cadets, has been chosen for a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to study at the University of Oxford.
I can recall a time (perhaps it's that way still) when American Federation of Government Employees grievances were oftentimes settled via monetary awards (some large - some small) as opposed to costly litigation. 
[American Thinker] President Obama, who has yet to endorse anyone for president, has one piece of advice for voters: pick a Democrat, any Democrat, doesn't matter whom.
[Washington Examiner] Supporters of President Trump say they are eager for House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler to take the helm of impeachment proceedings this week, predicting he will harm the Democratic case against Trump.
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
...
...have not been used since WWI except for in Iraq, by the late, unlamented Saddam Hussein and in Syria, but really, honest, not by the Syrian government. And in Germany in WWII, but that was against civilians. Lots of them, just one of many reasons Hitler's also late and unlamented...
...the testicleless mayor of South Bend, Indiana, since 2012. Buttigieg graduated from Harvard College and, on a Rhodes Scholarship, from Pembroke College, Oxford. From 2007 to 2010, he worked at McKinsey and Company, a consulting firm. From 2009 to 2017 Buttigieg served as an intelligence officer in the United States Navy Reserve, attaining the rank of lieutenant and deploying to Afghanistan in 2014. Buttigieg was first elected mayor of South Bend in 2011 and was reelected in 2015. During his second term, he announced he was gay. Buttigieg also campaigned for Indiana state treasurer in 2010 and for chair of the Democratic National Committee in 2017, losing both elections. He is running for the Dem nomination in 2020 on the theory that being mayor of a nondescript medium sized city is qualification to run the country...
...After the Libyan Civil War, Sabha grew in importance as a slave auctioning town. However, an investigation by the National Commission for Human Rights in Libya (NCHRL) revealed that while there was illegal slavery, reports were exaggerated, as slave auctions were rare and not made public. This was a great comfort to everyone but the slaves peddled in secret. The city was later seized by forces loyal to the Libyan National Army (LNA) and its leader Khalifa Haftar in January 2019, probably for its collection of MiG-25 aircraft....
...
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
...U.S. Representative for California's 43rd congressional district, serving since 1991, a total of 28.00464 years. A member of the Democratic Party, she is the most senior of the twelve black women currently serving in the United States Congress, and a member and former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. Before becoming a member of Congress she served in the California Assembly, to which she was first elected back when Disco was in flower, in 1976, which would make it 43.00259 years. She has been a politician for virtually all her adult life. If she was a little brighter she'd be a Communist...
The San Diego FBI and prosecutors Monday announced a $5 million reward for a wanted terrorist. 
.png "Wazoo")
Wazoo
[HOTAIR] It’s not going to happen this election cycle, however, there is speculation 
Congresswoman-for-Life from the San Francisco Bay Area, born into a family of professional politicians. On-again-off-again Speaker of the House. It's not her fault when they lose, but it's her accomplishment when they win. Noted for her heavily botoxed grimace and occasional senior... uhhh... moments...
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Russian combat robot, the Uranus-9, was recently photographed inside Syria, the Russian aviation publication Avia.Pro reported on Monday.
[ALMASDARNEWS] The 
...
