♫Twinkle, twinkle, little star.....♫
"Boston Internet service Starry, aiming to take on its bigger rivals, raises $100 million" by Hiawatha Bray Globe Staff July 05, 2018
Starry Inc., the Boston-based wireless Internet service, is bulking up with a $100 million funding round, which the upstart company will use to expand nationally in the high-stakes race to deploy super-fast broadband services across the United States.
Starry uses a type of extremely high-frequency radio technology to deliver broadband Internet service at speeds rivaling those from landline broadband companies such as Comcast Corp. and Verizon Communications. It recently was launched in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and has begun building networks in 14 other cities, including New York, Chicago, Seattle, Cleveland, and Indianapolis.
The technology requires only a small exterior antenna that is wired into a building’s communications equipment. In Boston, Starry has targeted apartment buildings and says its service can reach 300,000 households here. It charges $50 per month for a connection with speeds of up to 200 megabits per second.
The surge of new cash will support the company’s network buildout. With the additional capital, Starry has raised a total of $163 million from venture firms, including KKR, Firstmark Capital , and Tiger Global.
Starry is also facing off against the nation’s leading cellular companies — Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile — all of which have committed to deploying ultra-fast 5G wireless networks that will deliver data at much faster rates than today’s services. The 5G systems will offer broadband connections to fixed locations, as well as to cellphones and other mobile devices. As a result, they could spur fresh competition in the home broadband market and drive down prices for consumers; however, it will take time for 5G services to catch on, because current wireless devices do not work on those new networks. Consumers and businesses will have to buy new smartphones or new wireless receivers with 5G technology.
It's called creating a market, and no concerns about health effects?
China has made rapid deployment of 5G networks a key priority, while the Trump administration has declared that American leadership in 5G networks is a matter of national security.
Yeah, they don't want China listening to your calls; only the NSA can do that
(and they forward the stuff to you know who)!
In March, the administration blocked the Singapore-based chip company Broadcom from acquiring Qualcomm, a major maker of 5G chips that’s based in San Diego. And in January, the administration flirted with the idea of having the government build a single national 5G network, but that plan was abandoned almost immediately in the face of intense criticism from lawmakers and the Federal Communications Commission.....
They are coming home.
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Related: Drew Faust to join Goldman Sachs board
Also see:
Stormy Daniels makes an appearance in Portland club
She also came to Providence where she really packed 'em in before being arrested.
Jimmy Garoppolo hits the town with adult film star Kiara Mia
It's not ending in a honeymoon.
"New Jersey man tells Disney greeters he’ll blow the place up" AP September 07, 2018
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Investigators in Florida said they’ve arrested a New Jersey tourist who told greeters at a Disney World resort that Al Qaeda sent him to ‘‘blow the place up.’’
Oh, yeah? CIA-Duh sent him, did they?
Orange County Sheriff’s deputies arrested 56-year-old Gregory Lazarchick on Tuesday on a charge of making a false bomb threat.
Look, I'm sorry about his wife but once again we have a Jewish instigated event of this kind, and I think the reason are pretty darn clear. Apparently, he is some sort of Lazarus.
An arrest report says Lazarchick made the threat on July 21 at Saratoga Springs Resort as employees were asking guests about their day. He further told them that he wasn’t joking.
Why am I only reading about it now then, right before 9/11?
Because that's when they made the arrest(??)?
You gotta do better than that, guys.
News outlets report that Lazarchick later admitted to saying something about Al Qaeda when deputies spoke to him, but he said he didn’t remember exactly what he said. He was remorseful and apologetic. No bomb-making materials were found in his room.
Lazarchick’s sister told investigators he suffered a head injury and sometimes says inappropriate things.
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Related: Comcast drops Fox bid, paving way for sale to Disney
Strange bedfellows all around, 'eh?
♫When you wi$h upon a $tar, makes no difference who you are......♫
"A homeless, armless artist known for using his feet to paint pictures on Miami Beach is accused of stabbing a tourist from Chicago. 46-year-old Jonathan Crenshaw’s arrest record dates to 2008 and lists arrests for disorderly intoxication, vandalism, and battery on police officers, firefighters, and city code inspectors. Crenshaw remains in jail. An attorney isn’t listed in jail records. His court date is scheduled for July 18....."
Maybe you could help him out?
"Police raid home of couple who raised $400K for homeless man" Associated Press September 07, 2018
FLORENCE, N.J.— Police raided a New Jersey couple’s home and hauled away a new BMW Thursday after a homeless man accused them of helping themselves to some of the $400,000 in online donations they supposedly raised to help him start a new life.
Citing ‘‘enormous public interest’’ in the case, county prosecutor Scott Coffina confirmed in a Facebook post that Mark D’Amico and Katelyn McClure are under investigation, though no charges have been filed.
Then why was their stuff taken?
For all I know, they may have stolen the money but that only has not yet been proved, they haven't even been charged yet.
It was the latest twist in at onetime feel-good story about Johnny Bobbitt, who spent his last $20 to buy gas for McClure when she became stranded on a highway in Philadelphia last year. The couple subsequently found 14,000 people online who were so touched by his kindness that they donated to a fund to help him start a new life.
Police armed with a search warrant left the couple’s home in Florence, N.J., about 30 miles northeast of Philadelphia, with bags and boxes of material and the BMW, according to news outlets. Bobbitt has questioned where they got the money for the car. They have said they used their own money.
The couple are also being sued by Bobbitt, the homeless man who was to receive the donations, which were made through a GoFundMe page. In the suit, he says they used the account as a ‘‘personal piggy bank’’ to ‘‘fund a lifestyle they could not otherwise afford.’’
Interesting phrase, in the sense that it shows how early the $y$temic indoctrination begins. From out earliest memories we are taught to save money (meaning its valuable) in a bank (a benevolent thing that keeps your valuable safe).
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They should have went to work on Wall Street rather than starting a GoFundMe page.
So how is that lawsuit coming?
"Burt Reynolds, star of film, TV, and tabloids, dies at 82" by Ralph Blumenthal New York Times September 07, 2018
NEW YORK — Burt Reynolds, the wryly appealing Hollywood heartthrob who carried on a long love affair with moviegoers even though his performances were often more memorable than the films that contained them, died Thursday in Jupiter, Fla. He was 82.
A spokeswoman for the Martin County Sheriff’s Office said Mr. Reynolds died at the Jupiter Medical Center after being taken there in an ambulance from his home in Hobe Sound. A caretaker at the home had called the authorities, apparently after Mr. Reynolds experienced chest pains, the spokeswoman said. No cause of death was given.
A self-mocking charmer with laugh-crinkled dark eyes, a rakish mustache, and a hairy chest that he often bared onscreen, Mr. Reynolds did not always win the respect of critics, but for many years he was ranked among the top 10 movie draws worldwide, and from 1978 through 1982 he ruled the box office as few had done before.
From road comedies such as “Smokey and the Bandit” to romances like “Starting Over” to the hit television series “Evening Shade,” Mr. Reynolds delighted audiences for four decades, most often playing a good-hearted good ol’ boy seemingly not that different from his offscreen self.
Yet his career, which span-ned some 100 films and countless television appearances, was often marked by turbulence and he had close brushes with death, some resulting from his insistence on doing many of his dangerous stunts. He braved the raging rapids of the Chattooga River between Georgia and South Carolina for a favorite role, as one of four suburbanite buddies who undertake a journey into America’s heart of darkness, in “Deliverance” (1972).
A decade later he battled an addiction to prescription medication after his jaw was shattered in a fight scene, an accident that left him wizened and led to false whispers that he was dying of AIDS.
Fellow actors praised Mr. Reynolds as an exacting artist who worked hard at his craft and fought to overcome many demons, including a volatile temperament, but he himself projected an air of insouciance and professed not to take his career too seriously. He told The New York Times in 1978, “I think I’m the only movie star who’s a movie star in spite of his pictures, not because of them; I’ve had some real turkeys.”
To many in Hollywood, Mr. Reynolds was an enigma. Tormented by self-doubt — he particularly disliked hearing how much he resembled the young Marlon Brando — he was also strong-willed, clashing often with directors and producers. For much of his career he accepted roles, he admitted, “that would be the most fun, not the most challenging,” while turning down more substantive parts, including the one in “Terms of Endearment” that led to an Academy Award for Jack Nicholson.
Mr. Reynolds never won an Oscar, although he was nominated for best supporting actor (and won a Golden Globe) for his performance as a paternalistic director of pornographic movies in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1997 “Boogie Nights.” Robin Williams won that year, for “Good Will Hunting.”
“I once said I’d rather have a Heisman Trophy than an Oscar,” Mr. Reynolds, who played football in college, later wrote. “I lied.”
Burton Leon Reynolds Jr., originally called Buddy to distinguish him from his father, was born in Lansing, Mich., on Feb. 11, 1936, and grew up in Riviera Beach, Fla., where his father was police chief. Many biographical sources say Mr. Reynolds was born in Waycross, Ga., but in his 2015 memoir, “But Enough About Me” (written with Jon Winokur), he said he had told that to interviewers to distance himself from his northern roots. “I grew up a Southern boy who didn’t want to be a Yankee,” he wrote.
Although young Burt acted in high school plays, his passion was football. He played for Florida State University, but his sports career ended in 1955, when he was seriously injured in a car crash. He studied acting at Palm Beach Junior College before moving to New York City, where he shared an apartment with a fellow actor, Rip Torn, and found an agent with the help of Joanne Woodward.
Mr. Reynolds signed a seven-year contract with Universal Studios in 1958 and was cast in a new NBC series, “Riverboat,” starring Darren McGavin. He rubbed shoulders with Hollywood royalty on the Universal lot and, he recalled, received some valuable advice from Spencer Tracy on how to be a successful actor: Don’t let anybody catch you at it.
Mr. Reynolds left “Riverboat’’ before the show ended its brief run. (He later said he left after tossing an assistant director in the studio lake.)
He returned to New York in 1961 for what turned out to be a brief run on Broadway in the play “Look, We’ve Come Through” and then went back to Hollywood to play a half-Indian blacksmith on the long-running CBS western “Gunsmoke.”
In 1963, after what he called “a kooky whirlwind romance,” Mr. Reynolds wed a young British actress, Judy Carne, who would later gain fame as the “sock-it-to-me girl” on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.” By summer 1965 the marriage was over. Carne, who died in 2015, later said Mr. Reynolds had physically abused her, an accusation he denied.
He remained primarily a TV actor for the rest of the 1960s, with roles in episodes of “The Twilight Zone” (in a comedic episode in which his character was a parody of Brando), “Route 66,” “Perry Mason,” and many other shows. Mr. Reynolds, who was part Cherokee, was cast so often as a smoldering Indian.
His career did not take off until he became a regular on the talk-show circuit in the early 1970s, drawing laughs as the guest of Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin, and others by self-effacingly presenting himself as, in his words, “the most well-known unknown.”
One TV host who was particularly captivated by Mr. Reynolds’s charm was singer Dinah Shore. The difference in their ages raised some eyebrows — she was 20 years older than he was — but shortly after he was a guest on her popular afternoon show, the two became inseparable, and they remained a couple for several years.
His appearance in “Deliverance” in 1972 — his first substantial role in a major movie — was a turning point in his career.
His performance was critically praised and prompted talk of a possible Oscar nomination. That he did not get one was attributed by some, including Mr. Reynolds, to his decision to pose artfully nude as a centerfold in an issue of Cosmopolitan magazine that was published at roughly the same time the movie was released. The photo was a sensation, but the image it projected made it harder for Hollywood to take him seriously as an actor.
Knowing now what we know of Hollywood, and it stretches back to the founding does the casting couch, Burt should be honored for not getting one.
“It was really stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking,” Mr. Reynolds said in 2016. “I really wish I hadn’t done that.”
He nonetheless worked steadily for the next decade; he made more than 20 movies between 1973 and 1982, most of them hits. They included two in which he got to revive his college gridiron dreams: “The Longest Yard” (1974), which cast him as an imprisoned football star who coaches his fellow convicts to victory over the warden’s team, and “Semi-Tough” (1977), based on Dan Jenkins’s comic novel about pro football.
Mr. Reynolds took on one of his defining roles in 1977, when he played a daredevil driver who leads the law — Jackie Gleason as a hyperventilating sheriff — on a madcap chase from Texas to Georgia in “Smokey and the Bandit,” a box-office smash that spawned two sequels (although Mr. Reynolds made only a cameo appearance in the third “Smokey” film) and ignited a long-running romance between Mr. Reynolds and his co-star, Sally Field.
“One of the things people say about ‘Smokey’ is that you watch two people fall in love on the screen,” Mr. Reynolds wrote in “But Enough About Me,” “and it’s true.”
Although he once called Field “the love of my life,” their relationship ended after a few years.
Critics were not impressed by “Smokey and the Bandit,” but audiences were thrilled: Only “Star Wars” did better business that year. For five weeks’ work on another car-chase picture, “The Cannonball Run” (1981) — directed, as were the first two “Smokey” movies, by Mr. Reynolds’s friend Hal Needham, a former stuntman — he was paid $5 million (the equivalent of about $14 million in 2018 dollars), a record at the time.
Success gave Mr. Reynolds the freedom to try new things. He directed himself in “Gator” (1976), “The End” (1978), “Sharky’s Machine” (1981) and “Stick” (1985). He tried his hand at musical comedy — feebly, critics said — in “At Long Last Love” (1975), with Cybill Shepherd, and again in “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” (1982), with Dolly Parton.
By the time he returned to the cars-as-stars genre as a stock-car racer in “Stroker Ace” (1983), his career had peaked. Vincent Canby of The Times called it “the must-miss movie of the summer,” and this time audiences agreed.
Mr. Reynolds and his “Stroker Ace” co-star, Loni Anderson, began living together in 1984 and wed in 1988. The marriage ended in 1993, in acrimony unusual even by Hollywood standards. Two decades later, the acrimony remained. “The truth is,” he wrote in 2015, “I never did like her.”
But did he beat her?
Survivors include their son, Quinton.
Mr. Reynolds was making “City Heat” (1984) with Clint Eastwood — a pairing of Hollywood heavyweights that turned out to be another box-office flop — when a stuntman clobbered him with a heavy chair that was supposed to be a breakaway balsa wood prop.
Along with a shattered jaw, he was found to have temporomandibular joint disorder. He became addicted to the sedative Halcion. He overcame that addiction, but later entered rehab after injuring his back and becoming addicted to painkillers. Adding to those problems, his investments soured, leaving him deeply in debt.
He rebounded and in 1990 began a long run on a new CBS comedy, “Evening Shade,” playing, in yet another football iteration, a former pro player who returns to his small Arkansas hometown to coach the losing local high school team. He won an Emmy for his performance in 1991.
His days as a box-office champion were long over by then, but he remained busy almost to the end. In addition to his Oscar-nominated triumph in “Boogie Nights,” there were small roles in big movies, bigger roles in smaller movies, voice-over work in cartoons, and numerous television appearances, often as an exaggerated version of himself.....
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Never mentioned his role in the Dukes of Hazzard.
"Adrian Cronauer, the disc jockey whose story provided the rough outlines for the character played by Robin Williams in the 1987 movie "Good Morning, Vietnam," in 1979, with the Korean War sitcom "M.A.S.H." and the radio-themed "WKRP in Cincinnati" both on the air, he tried selling a treatment of his experiences as a television series but found no takers. A few years after that he pitched a made-for-TV movie. "This time, a friend's agent in Hollywood got it into Robin's hands," Mr. Cronauer related in a 1995 interview, "and he said: 'Oh, disc jockey; chance to do all my comic shtick. Let's do it as a real movie,'" but not one that used Mr. Cronauer's version of events: what ended up in "Good morning, Vietnam," which was directed by Barry Levinson, was a largely fictionalized story from a screenplay by Mitch Markowitz. Still....."
That is standard for Hollywood (and the pre$$, when you think about it), and there has been a lot less laughter in the world since his passing.
"Amway founder and Magic owner Richard DeVos dies at age 92" by Keith Schneider New York Times September 06, 2018
NEW YORK — Richard M. DeVos, the Amway Corp. cofounder, who built and used one of the 20th century’s great personal fortunes to bolster the Republican Party, restore civic vitality to his hometown, Grand Rapids, Mich., and buy the Orlando Magic of the National Basketball Association, died Thursday. He was 92.
His death, at his home in Ada, Mich., was caused by complications of an infection, according to a statement on the Magic’s website.
An evangelical Christian who espoused the virtues of self-reliance, capitalism, and the free market, Mr. DeVos was above all a superb salesman. He joined Jay Van Andel, his friend and business partner for 55 years, in marketing the concept of direct sales and turned the privately owned Amway Corp. into a global enterprise with more than $8.6 billion in sales in 2017, more than 17,000 employees, and hundreds of thousands of independent salespeople.
At his death, Mr. DeVos and his family had an estimated net worth of $5.5 billion. His daughter-in-law Betsy DeVos is education secretary in the Trump administration.
As his wealth increased, so did Mr. DeVos’s prominence as a political strategist and donor to the Republican Party and conservative organizations. He supported the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, and Focus on the Family, and he was a member of the executive committee of the Council for National Policy, which starting in the early 1980s pushed to propel Christian values to the center of Republican activities nationally.
In the 1990s, the Amway Corp. spent $2.5 million a year on Republican candidates and party activities, making it the largest corporate political donor in the country. Mr. DeVos, who cultivated political allies with the deftness of a senior statesman, had also served as finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Just when we needed him most.
In 1996 he was honored at a $3 million Republican fund-raising event in Washington at which then-Senator Bob Dole extolled his influence in the antiabortion movement and in compelling the party to embrace evangelical doctrine to build a political majority.
President Gerald R. Ford, a native of Grand Rapids, was one of Mr. DeVos’s friends. Mr. DeVos also advised Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Mr. DeVos was a member of Reagan’s AIDS commission and helped develop the weekly presidential radio address when he agreed to carry Reagan’s Saturday noon broadcasts on the Mutual Broadcasting System, which was then owned by Amway.
Mr. DeVos’s ideas about “compassionate capitalism,” which were explored in his 1994 book by the same title, were an important source for George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” campaign slogan in 2000.
Mr. DeVos was an engaged philanthropist, particularly for educational, religious, and civic projects in Grand Rapids, where he was born and raised. Calvin College in Grand Rapids, which he attended, was a beneficiary of Mr. DeVos’s gift giving, as was the Christian Reformed Church.
In recent years Grand Rapids, Michigan’s second-largest city, has experienced a civic and business revival in large part because of the investments that Mr. DeVos and Van Andel made to restore historic structures.
In addition, a new downtown campus for Grand Valley State University, a new civic center, and the DeVos Children’s Hospital, regarded as one of the leading pediatric hospitals in the nation, all bear Mr. DeVos's name.
As long as there is no sexual harassment or racism the name can be left on the structure.
Mr. DeVos bought the Orlando Magic for $80 million in 1991, in part because he saw that owning an NBA team would provide a more visible platform for what Pat Williams, his biographer and now a senior vice president of the team, said was “his message of success through faith, optimism, perseverance, and hard work.”
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Full Moonves rising:
"Les Moonves said to be negotiating possible exit from CBS" by Edmund Lee New York Times September 06, 2018
NEW YORK — Leslie Moonves, faced with an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment against him as well as a bitter boardroom battle over the control of CBS, has for the last few weeks been negotiating his potential exit from the network he has run for two decades.
Moonves has been talking to the board about his possible departure as chief executive, including terms of a payout that would be far less than $180 million, the amount specified in his employment agreement should he leave the CBS Corp., according to three people familiar with the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private bargaining agreement.
Why should he get anything?
The multiple allegations of sexual harassment against Moonves have partly motivated the talks, which could still break down.
During his tenure, Moonves, 68, has helped transform CBS from a last-place network into the most watched channel for the last decade, with hits like “The Big Bang Theory” and “Survivor.” That success has made Moonves one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood and his possible departure has put the future fortunes of the company into doubt.
For over a month, Moonves has been grappling with the two separate but equally fateful issues.
Poor Les!
In July, The New Yorker published an article, written by investigative journalist Ronan Farrow, in which six women made allegations of harassment against Moonves. The earliest allegations in the article date to the mid-1980s, and the most recent to 2006.
Did the New York Times and NBC turn him down on this one, too, like they did with Weinstein?
In a statement at the time, Moonves said: “I recognize that there were times decades ago when I may have made some women uncomfortable by making advances. Those were mistakes, and I regret them immensely. But I always understood and respected — and abided by the principle — that ‘no’ means ‘no,’ and I have never misused my position to harm or hinder anyone’s career.”
Shortly after the article was published, the CBS board enlisted two law firms to lead an inquiry into the claims against Moonves and the wider workplace culture at the network. The board soon after folded a separate examination of CBS News — underway since March — into the larger investigation.
What is taking so long?
The board hired Nancy Kestenbaum of Covington & Burling and Mary Jo White of Debevoise & Plimpton to conduct the inquiry.
White led the Securities and Exchange Commission during the Obama administration and was previously the US attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Kestenbaum was also a federal prosecutor with the same district. The investigation into CBS News is being led by the law firm of Proskauer Rose.
Moonves draws an annual pay package worth $69.3 million. His employment agreement included a provision that would give him more than $184 million in pay and benefits as part of his exit if the board fires him without fault, or if he leaves because of the legal dispute.....
That's when it set.
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Thank you, readers, and good night.
MORNING UPDATE:
"It’s a familiar — and anxiety-producing — cycle to those who feel addicted to their phones, and big tech is taking notice. Google recently released the results of a study in which it found “social media, e-mail and news apps were creating a constant sense of obligation, generating unintended personal stress” on smartphones. It’s part of the company’s attempt to address criticism that the tech industry has not been sensitive to the harm its products can cause....."
Must be why I'm here every morning.
Showing posts with label Prop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prop. Show all posts
Friday, September 7, 2018
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
The Residue of Trump's Trip
Related: Trump's First Foreign Trip
Did you notice how they were trying to turn reality upside down by portraying a friendly relationship as hostile?
"Hamas says cutting electricity to Gaza would be ‘catastrophic’" Associated Press June 12, 2017
GAZA CITY — Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers warned of renewed violence Monday if Israel acquiesces to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s wishes and reduces its electricity supply to the isolated territory.
The man is an agent of Zionism!
Btw, how did he get the job?
Gaza’s 2 million residents already get by with only four hours of electricity a day. In an effort to push his Hamas rivals out of power, Abbas says his West Bank government will stop paying Israel to provide electricity.
Talk about having your boot on the pulse of a people.
Someone call the U.N.
That has put Israel in the tough spot of having to choose between siding with Hamas in the internal Palestinian struggle or risking a humanitarian crisis in the impoverished coastal strip.
Oh, gees, poor Israel!
An Israeli official confirmed that Israel is preparing to reduce the amount of power it supplies to Gaza, at the request of the Palestinian Authority. The official estimated that the reduction would limit power to three hours a day. The official said that Israel was searching for international donors to make up the difference, but that Israel itself would not pay for Gaza’s power. It was not clear when the reductions would take effect.
I'd say ask Qatar, but.... maybe you could call on your increasingly close friends the Saudis?
The official was not authorized to discuss the matter on the record and spoke on condition of anonymity.
‘‘This Israeli decision is dangerous and catastrophic,’’ said a Hamas spokesman Abdulatif al-Qanou. ‘‘This virtually speeds up the deterioration and explosion of the situation in the Gaza Strip.’’
That is what contained my print copy, but I so hunger for news of Palestinians in my Zioni$t pre$$ and what offers the web version:
After repeated failed reconciliation attempts, Abbas has tried to squeeze Hamas financially in recent months, hoping to force it to cede control of Gaza, which the Islamic militant group has ruled for the last decade.
He's acting just like an USraeli!
He slashed salaries of his employees there, stopped payments for ex-prisoners, and reinstated taxes on the power plant’s fuel.
Most recently, he asked Israel to reduce Gaza electricity by 40 percent. The Israeli decision appears to be seeking a compromise.
‘‘Let’s not forget, this is Abu Mazen’s decision,’’ Gilad Erdan, Israel’s public security minister, told Army Radio on Monday, referring to Abbas by his nickname. ‘‘Should Israeli citizens pay the electric bill of the residents of Gaza? Of course that doesn’t make sense.’’
Yeah, well, everyone knows you put him up to it -- or it would mean the end of him and his perks!
Gazans have been trying to cope with the lengthy outages. The poor have been relying on battery-operated lights, the middle class on communal generators, and the few wealthy families have turned to solar energy.
Environmentally-conscious terrorists?
But authorities warn of an impending crisis in health care and the environment. Each day, 120,000 cubic meters of untreated sewage is discharged into the sea.
Okay, at least it is not radioactive like over at Fukushima, but the sewage is literally shit from Israel.
The Gaza electricity distribution company says it has not yet been informed of the Israeli decision to slash electricity, but warned of ‘‘serious deterioration’’ if the cuts went into effect.
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Time to swing over to the Persian Gulf:
"Qatar begins shipping cargo through Oman to bypass Gulf rift" Associated Press June 12, 2017
DOHA, Qatar — Qatar said Monday it had begun shipping cargo through Oman to bypass Gulf countries that have cut off sea routes to the tiny, energy-rich nation, the latest move by Doha to show it can survive a diplomatic dispute with its neighbors.
Yeah, I saw something about that on Sunday.
Qatar’s port authority published video showing a container ship loaded down with cargo arriving at Doha’s Hamad Port from Oman’s Sohar Port, to a water-cannon welcome.
Typically, cargo for Qatar stops at Dubai’s massive deep-water Jebel Ali port or in the Emirati capital of Abu Dhabi, then gets put on smaller boats heading to Doha. But since June 5, the UAE has joined Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt in cutting off sea traffic to Qatar as the nations sever diplomatic ties over Qatar’s alleged support of extremist groups and close ties to Iran.
Monday, Eritrea expressed support for Saudi Arabia and its allies after they cut ties with Qatar. The Eritrean Information Ministry statement of support came despite previously close ties with Qatar.
WTF are they getting involved for or taking a position on? US pressure?
It truly is a world war at this stage. Everybody choosing up sides!
At least it will distract from the coming economic collapse that will only benefit, once again, the wealthy elite. Just like it did last time.
Qatar’s foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said Monday that Qatar is in contact with international aviation authorities and legal organizations as it tries to fight back against moves to cut off its land, air, and sea access.
Same drill:
Qatar’s port authority said its cargo will go through Sohar, as well as Oman’s port at Salalah, bypassing the need to dock in any of those countries that have cut ties. Global shipper Maersk already has said it will begin using Salalah for its shipments to Qatar.
Meanwhile, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency has said two Iranian Navy vessels will stop off in Oman soon as part of an anti-piracy patrol. Oman routinely serves as a back-channel negotiator for Western governments needing to speak to Tehran.
They helped John Kerry make the deal with Iran.
The diplomatic crisis, the worst since the 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and the subsequent Gulf War, has seen Arab nations and others cut ties to Qatar, which hosts a major US military base and will be the host of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Doha is a major international travel hub, but flagship carrier Qatar Airways now flies increasingly over Iran and Turkey after being blocked elsewhere in the Middle East.
After an initial run on supermarkets by panicked residents, Qatar has secured dairy products from Turkey. Iran also has shipped in vegetables by air and plans to send some 350 tons of fruit by sea to Qatar, with which it shares a massive offshore natural gas field.
Saudis thought they would grab those like Saddam grabbed Kuwait.
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So let's see, we basically have the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Western Europe on one side with Qatar, Turkey, Iran, and Russia on the other side.
And here is where they would land:
"Syrian troops battle rebels in Daraa, advance on Iraq border" by Philip Issa Associated Press June 12, 2017
BEIRUT — Syrian government forces and rebels were locked in their heaviest fighting yet in Daraa on Monday, as opposition activists feared troops would try to retake the southern city despite a ‘‘de-escalation agreement.’’
Progovernment forces, meanwhile, advanced to a second location along the border with Iraq, where they are expected to link up with state-sanctioned militias on the other side. Most of the desert territory is controlled by the Islamic State.
The state-affiliated Ikhbariya TV station hailed the government’s second contact with Iraq, with its correspondent Rabih Dibi stepping over the berm border. There was no one to greet him on the other side, but he promised ‘‘the brotherly forces of Iraq’’ would link up with them soon.
Iran sponsors both the Iraqi militias and the forces arriving at the border on the Syrian side, including Syrian army units, as well as militias organized by Tehran from Lebanon to Afghanistan.
Iran’s state-affiliated Tasnim News Agency published photos of General Qassem Soleimani, head of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, praying with Afghan fighters on the Syrian side of the border.
In Iraq on Monday, US-backed Iraqi forces pushed toward a medical complex in western Mosul, trying to dislodge Islamic State militants from two neighborhoods they still partly hold outside the Old City.
Brigadier General Mustafa al-Azzawi of the Iraqi army’s 36th Brigade said his forces had established a foothold at the edge of the medical complex, overcoming heavy resistance. Smoke rose from artillery shelling and coalition airstrikes pounded the area as Iraqi armored vehicles headed toward the front line.
Iraq launched an operation to retake Mosul, its second largest city, in October. Syria is in the sixth year of a civil war that has killed more than 400,000 people.
Related: Hundreds sickened by mass food poisoning in Iraqi camp
All signs point to Chinese takeout.
The Syrian coalition on Friday established its first toehold on the Iraqi border in three years, with the help of Russian airstrikes against Islamic State militants. The troops bypassed US special operations forces embedded with local opposition fighters at the Tanf and Zakf desert outposts dozens of miles to the south.
What they have done is encircled them.
Former US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, now a Senior Fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, warned in a brief that the opposition forces have been cornered. He said the Syrian government was determined to ‘‘link up to pro-Iranian forces on the Iraqi side of the border.’’
Who is Robert Ford, and for whom is he now working?
That's who my war pre$$ turns to for expert analysis?
In Daraa, rebels and government forces were fighting for control of the city’s Palestinian refugee camp. Local resident and media activist Ahmad al-Masalmeh said it was the third time in eight days that progovernment forces tried to advance with tanks under the cover of airstrikes.
Major Issam al-Rais, a spokesman for the rebels’ Southern Front division fighting in the city, said the battle was ‘‘life or death.’’
Rais said 17 fighters from the government’s side had been killed in the fighting in the last two days. It was not clear how many rebels were killed.
A Syrian general, who spoke on condition of anonymity, blamed the fighting in Daraa on the rebels. He said the military was ‘‘committed to the cease-fire’’ but would respond to any aggression.
A ‘‘de-escalation agreement’’ brokered by Iran, Russia, and Turkey in May has not brought any relief for the city, activists said. The pact covers four zones in Syria where the rebels are fighting progovernment forces.
The activist-run Nabaa Media outlet released footage of thick smoke rising over the city after a string of blasts. It alleged the government was using napalm-like weapons. The footage was filmed Sunday. The Syrian general denied the claims.
Yeah, whatever. Keep trotting out those false claims while ignoring the white phosphorous and depleted uranium use.
--more--"
The other battlefield:
"US cyberweapons prove to be disappointing against ISIS" by David E. Sanger New York Times June 13, 2017
WASHINGTON — America’s fast-growing ranks of secret cyberwarriors have in recent years blown up nuclear centrifuges in Iran and turned to computer code and electronic warfare to sabotage North Korea’s missile launches, with mixed results.
Yeah, well, they only go after the bad guys and aren't behind any of the hacks, yup.
But since they began training their arsenal of cyberweapons on a more elusive target, Internet use by the Islamic State group, the results have been a consistent disappointment, US officials say.
One reason being, of course, that ISIS™ is an AmeriKan proxy and propaganda tool.
The effectiveness of the nation’s arsenal of cyberweapons has hit its limits, they have discovered, against an enemy that exploits the Internet largely to recruit, spread propaganda, and use encrypted communications, all of which can be quickly reconstituted after US teams freeze their computers or manipulate their data.
Then they will JUST HAVE TO STOP SPENDING MONEY on ALL THOSE PROGRAMS, 'eh?
I mean, you CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS, guys! You can't scoop up Reality Winner and then come back and say we can't find the terrorists!
It has been more than a year since the Pentagon said it was opening a new line of combat against the Islamic State, directing Cyber Command, then six years old, to mount computer-network attacks. The mission was clear: Disrupt the ability of ISIS to spread its message, attract new adherents, pay fighters, and circulate orders from commanders.
But after recent attacks in Britain and Iran claimed by the Islamic State, or ISIS, it has become clear that recruitment efforts and communications hubs reappear almost as quickly as they are torn down.
This is prompting officials to rethink how cyberwarfare techniques, first designed for fixed targets like nuclear facilities, must be refashioned to fight terrorist groups that are becoming more adept at turning the Web into a weapon.
Only one answer: shut it down.
“In general, there was some sense of disappointment in the overall ability for cyberoperations to land a major blow against ISIS,” said Joshua Geltzer, senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council until March.
“This is just much harder in practice than people think,’’ Geltzer said.
PFFFFFFFFT!
Even one of the rare successes against ISIS belongs at least in part to Israel, which was America’s partner in the attacks against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Israeli cyberoperators penetrated a small cell of bombmakers in Syria months ago, the officials said. That was how the United States learned the group was working to make explosives that fool airport X-ray machines by looking exactly like batteries for laptop computers.
Must be why ISIS™ never attacks Israel but only those all around it.
The information helped prompt a ban in March on large electronics in carry-on luggage on flights from 10 airports in eight Muslim-majority countries to the United States.
I was told they didn't actually follow through with the ban, but whatever.
--more--"
Related: Nuclear Attack Will Come From the Shadows
Now back to the $hadows with you!
"Roadside bomb hits US convoy in Afghanistan" New York Times June 12, 2017
JALALABAD, Afghanistan — Three civilians were killed after a roadside bomb hit a convoy of US soldiers Monday in Nangarhar province, in eastern Afghanistan, according to Afghan officials in the area.
The civilians were killed when soldiers opened fire after the explosion, according to a spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar.
OMG, it's like infamous Blackwater case in Iraq where there was gunfire and they just opened up all around them. These things happen far more than is reported, too!
So when does the $orry and $2500 bucks come, huh?!!!
The US military said that none of its personnel had been wounded. It added that though there was an exchange of gunfire after the bombing, it had received no official reports of civilian casualties.
Given the Afghan protests recently, I suspect they will be back out in the streets.
All six US soldiers who have been killed in Afghanistan in 2017 have died in Nangarhar province while fighting the Islamic State. The most recent three died Saturday in an apparent insider attack.
In a separate development, the Taliban’s second in command and head of the militant Haqqani network denied involvement in recent deadly attacks in Kabul and western Afghanistan, the Associated Press reported.....
If you run my June roll maybe you can get to the bottom of it.
--more--"
"Japan seeks to expand arms deals with Southeast Asia" by Mari Yamaguchi Associated Press June 12, 2017
CHIBA, Japan — A defense official said Monday that Japan is seeking to increase its sales of military equipment to Southeast Asian nations amid growing tensions with China and North Korea.
As if they have a certain $elf-intere$t in those tensions we are told our leaders are working feverishly to quell!
The move is part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s push to bolster Japan’s military role and its sales of defense equipment, especially in Southeast Asia, where China has expanded its own arms sales.
It's all so Bazaar.
Hideaki Watanabe, head of the Defense Ministry’s Acquisition Technology and Logistics Agency, said Japan will host a meeting Thursday with defense officials from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to discuss the sharing of equipment and technology.
He spoke Monday at an international arms exhibit near Tokyo that was attended by hundreds of defense officials and industry leaders from around the world.
Man, yesterday it was the Germans taking matters into their own hands and now the Japanese.
Watanabe said there have been aggressive attempts by nations in recent years to change the status quo, in an apparent reference to China’s building of artificial islands in disputed areas of the South China Sea.
And the U.S. will go to war with anyone to prevent that.
‘‘It is essential to maintain the open and stable sea under the rule of law,’’ he said. ‘‘Ensuring safety of navigation and flight contributes to the peace and prosperity of Japan and international society. Japan’s research and development of high-quality defense equipment contributes to the defense of Japan and elsewhere.’’
Japan’s defense industry at home is worth about $16 billion annually, a fraction of the country’s $470 billion auto industry.
Japan had restricted arms exports under its post-World War II war-renouncing constitution, limiting joint research and development to the United States under a bilateral security pact.
Since an easing of the rules in 2014, Japan now has joint research deals with Britain, Australia, and France.
To scale up the defense industry, Japan’s government has bolstered research funding to more than $90 million this year.
How is that Fukushima clean-up going?
Japan has been promoting the transfer of defense equipment to Southeast Asian countries to help their maritime security capabilities amid China’s growing presence in the South China Sea, but deals have been limited to the sale of TC-90 surveillance aircraft to the Philippines.
China already exports mostly low-cost military equipment to many Southeast Asian countries.
The arms exhibit, sponsored by the Japanese defense, foreign and industry ministries, included panel discussions focused on missile defense. North Korea has conducted several missile tests this year.
US defense giant Lockheed Martin and Japanese contractors Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries were among dozens of exhibitors from around the world who had booths at this year’s Mast Asia exhibit, just east of Tokyo.
Yes, war is good bu$ine$$. Why would anyone ever want to stop it?
--more--"
Time to shut the door and go grab some sushi.
Largest anti-Kremlin protests in years roll across Russia
Was my World lead so you know it is controlled opposition to sow destabilization of Putin.
And rather than watch some lame propaganda (and speaking of staged and scripted hoaxes), I suggest you catch some other interviews of the man. Watched the first part last night. Ollie is a little out there, but Putin is a logical and lucid man. Kind of made me ashamed of the ones I've lived under.
"On June 13, 1917, during World War I, a group of German Gotha bombers attacked London, killing 162 people.
In 1927, aviation hero Charles Lindbergh was honored with a ticker-tape parade in New York City.
He would later be vilified for this.
In 1935, James Braddock claimed the title of world heavyweight boxing champion from Max Baer in a 15-round fight in Queens.
Germans, Germans, Germans.
In 1957, the Mayflower II, a replica of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to America in 1620, arrived at Plymouth after a nearly two-month journey from England.
In 1966, the Supreme Court ruled in Miranda v. Arizona that criminal suspects had to be informed of their constitutional right to consult with an attorney and to remain silent.
In 1967, President Lyndon B Johnson nominated Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall to become the first black justice on the US Supreme Court.
In 1977, James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., was recaptured following his escape three days earlier from a Tennessee prison.
In 1997, a jury voted unanimously to give Timothy McVeigh the death penalty for the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.
Couple of patsies there. Just a job, man.
In 2007, insurgents blew up the two minarets of a revered Shi’ite shrine in Samarra, Iraq, a year after the shrine’s golden dome was destroyed in a bombing.
Those turned out to be U.S. false flags meant to strike at the very heart of Shi'ite Islam.
In 2016, a day after the Orlando, Fla., nightclub shooting rampage that claimed 49 victims, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton offered drastically different proposals for stemming the threat of terrorism and gun violence; Trump focused heavily on the nation’s immigration system (even though the shooter was US born) and redoubled his call for temporarily banning Muslims from the United States, while Clinton said she would prioritize stopping ‘‘lone wolf’’ attackers as president and reiterated her call for banning assault weapons....."
Then there is the Untold History of the World, nothing to take pride in.
Did you notice how they were trying to turn reality upside down by portraying a friendly relationship as hostile?
"Hamas says cutting electricity to Gaza would be ‘catastrophic’" Associated Press June 12, 2017
GAZA CITY — Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers warned of renewed violence Monday if Israel acquiesces to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s wishes and reduces its electricity supply to the isolated territory.
The man is an agent of Zionism!
Btw, how did he get the job?
Gaza’s 2 million residents already get by with only four hours of electricity a day. In an effort to push his Hamas rivals out of power, Abbas says his West Bank government will stop paying Israel to provide electricity.
Talk about having your boot on the pulse of a people.
Someone call the U.N.
That has put Israel in the tough spot of having to choose between siding with Hamas in the internal Palestinian struggle or risking a humanitarian crisis in the impoverished coastal strip.
Oh, gees, poor Israel!
An Israeli official confirmed that Israel is preparing to reduce the amount of power it supplies to Gaza, at the request of the Palestinian Authority. The official estimated that the reduction would limit power to three hours a day. The official said that Israel was searching for international donors to make up the difference, but that Israel itself would not pay for Gaza’s power. It was not clear when the reductions would take effect.
I'd say ask Qatar, but.... maybe you could call on your increasingly close friends the Saudis?
The official was not authorized to discuss the matter on the record and spoke on condition of anonymity.
‘‘This Israeli decision is dangerous and catastrophic,’’ said a Hamas spokesman Abdulatif al-Qanou. ‘‘This virtually speeds up the deterioration and explosion of the situation in the Gaza Strip.’’
That is what contained my print copy, but I so hunger for news of Palestinians in my Zioni$t pre$$ and what offers the web version:
After repeated failed reconciliation attempts, Abbas has tried to squeeze Hamas financially in recent months, hoping to force it to cede control of Gaza, which the Islamic militant group has ruled for the last decade.
He's acting just like an USraeli!
He slashed salaries of his employees there, stopped payments for ex-prisoners, and reinstated taxes on the power plant’s fuel.
Most recently, he asked Israel to reduce Gaza electricity by 40 percent. The Israeli decision appears to be seeking a compromise.
‘‘Let’s not forget, this is Abu Mazen’s decision,’’ Gilad Erdan, Israel’s public security minister, told Army Radio on Monday, referring to Abbas by his nickname. ‘‘Should Israeli citizens pay the electric bill of the residents of Gaza? Of course that doesn’t make sense.’’
Yeah, well, everyone knows you put him up to it -- or it would mean the end of him and his perks!
Gazans have been trying to cope with the lengthy outages. The poor have been relying on battery-operated lights, the middle class on communal generators, and the few wealthy families have turned to solar energy.
Environmentally-conscious terrorists?
But authorities warn of an impending crisis in health care and the environment. Each day, 120,000 cubic meters of untreated sewage is discharged into the sea.
Okay, at least it is not radioactive like over at Fukushima, but the sewage is literally shit from Israel.
The Gaza electricity distribution company says it has not yet been informed of the Israeli decision to slash electricity, but warned of ‘‘serious deterioration’’ if the cuts went into effect.
--more--"
*****************************
Time to swing over to the Persian Gulf:
"Qatar begins shipping cargo through Oman to bypass Gulf rift" Associated Press June 12, 2017
DOHA, Qatar — Qatar said Monday it had begun shipping cargo through Oman to bypass Gulf countries that have cut off sea routes to the tiny, energy-rich nation, the latest move by Doha to show it can survive a diplomatic dispute with its neighbors.
Yeah, I saw something about that on Sunday.
Qatar’s port authority published video showing a container ship loaded down with cargo arriving at Doha’s Hamad Port from Oman’s Sohar Port, to a water-cannon welcome.
Typically, cargo for Qatar stops at Dubai’s massive deep-water Jebel Ali port or in the Emirati capital of Abu Dhabi, then gets put on smaller boats heading to Doha. But since June 5, the UAE has joined Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt in cutting off sea traffic to Qatar as the nations sever diplomatic ties over Qatar’s alleged support of extremist groups and close ties to Iran.
Monday, Eritrea expressed support for Saudi Arabia and its allies after they cut ties with Qatar. The Eritrean Information Ministry statement of support came despite previously close ties with Qatar.
WTF are they getting involved for or taking a position on? US pressure?
It truly is a world war at this stage. Everybody choosing up sides!
At least it will distract from the coming economic collapse that will only benefit, once again, the wealthy elite. Just like it did last time.
Qatar’s foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said Monday that Qatar is in contact with international aviation authorities and legal organizations as it tries to fight back against moves to cut off its land, air, and sea access.
Same drill:
Qatar’s port authority said its cargo will go through Sohar, as well as Oman’s port at Salalah, bypassing the need to dock in any of those countries that have cut ties. Global shipper Maersk already has said it will begin using Salalah for its shipments to Qatar.
Meanwhile, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency has said two Iranian Navy vessels will stop off in Oman soon as part of an anti-piracy patrol. Oman routinely serves as a back-channel negotiator for Western governments needing to speak to Tehran.
They helped John Kerry make the deal with Iran.
The diplomatic crisis, the worst since the 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and the subsequent Gulf War, has seen Arab nations and others cut ties to Qatar, which hosts a major US military base and will be the host of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Doha is a major international travel hub, but flagship carrier Qatar Airways now flies increasingly over Iran and Turkey after being blocked elsewhere in the Middle East.
After an initial run on supermarkets by panicked residents, Qatar has secured dairy products from Turkey. Iran also has shipped in vegetables by air and plans to send some 350 tons of fruit by sea to Qatar, with which it shares a massive offshore natural gas field.
Saudis thought they would grab those like Saddam grabbed Kuwait.
--more--"
So let's see, we basically have the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Western Europe on one side with Qatar, Turkey, Iran, and Russia on the other side.
And here is where they would land:
"Syrian troops battle rebels in Daraa, advance on Iraq border" by Philip Issa Associated Press June 12, 2017
BEIRUT — Syrian government forces and rebels were locked in their heaviest fighting yet in Daraa on Monday, as opposition activists feared troops would try to retake the southern city despite a ‘‘de-escalation agreement.’’
Progovernment forces, meanwhile, advanced to a second location along the border with Iraq, where they are expected to link up with state-sanctioned militias on the other side. Most of the desert territory is controlled by the Islamic State.
The state-affiliated Ikhbariya TV station hailed the government’s second contact with Iraq, with its correspondent Rabih Dibi stepping over the berm border. There was no one to greet him on the other side, but he promised ‘‘the brotherly forces of Iraq’’ would link up with them soon.
Iran sponsors both the Iraqi militias and the forces arriving at the border on the Syrian side, including Syrian army units, as well as militias organized by Tehran from Lebanon to Afghanistan.
Iran’s state-affiliated Tasnim News Agency published photos of General Qassem Soleimani, head of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, praying with Afghan fighters on the Syrian side of the border.
In Iraq on Monday, US-backed Iraqi forces pushed toward a medical complex in western Mosul, trying to dislodge Islamic State militants from two neighborhoods they still partly hold outside the Old City.
Brigadier General Mustafa al-Azzawi of the Iraqi army’s 36th Brigade said his forces had established a foothold at the edge of the medical complex, overcoming heavy resistance. Smoke rose from artillery shelling and coalition airstrikes pounded the area as Iraqi armored vehicles headed toward the front line.
Iraq launched an operation to retake Mosul, its second largest city, in October. Syria is in the sixth year of a civil war that has killed more than 400,000 people.
Related: Hundreds sickened by mass food poisoning in Iraqi camp
All signs point to Chinese takeout.
The Syrian coalition on Friday established its first toehold on the Iraqi border in three years, with the help of Russian airstrikes against Islamic State militants. The troops bypassed US special operations forces embedded with local opposition fighters at the Tanf and Zakf desert outposts dozens of miles to the south.
What they have done is encircled them.
Former US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, now a Senior Fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, warned in a brief that the opposition forces have been cornered. He said the Syrian government was determined to ‘‘link up to pro-Iranian forces on the Iraqi side of the border.’’
Who is Robert Ford, and for whom is he now working?
That's who my war pre$$ turns to for expert analysis?
In Daraa, rebels and government forces were fighting for control of the city’s Palestinian refugee camp. Local resident and media activist Ahmad al-Masalmeh said it was the third time in eight days that progovernment forces tried to advance with tanks under the cover of airstrikes.
Major Issam al-Rais, a spokesman for the rebels’ Southern Front division fighting in the city, said the battle was ‘‘life or death.’’
Rais said 17 fighters from the government’s side had been killed in the fighting in the last two days. It was not clear how many rebels were killed.
A Syrian general, who spoke on condition of anonymity, blamed the fighting in Daraa on the rebels. He said the military was ‘‘committed to the cease-fire’’ but would respond to any aggression.
A ‘‘de-escalation agreement’’ brokered by Iran, Russia, and Turkey in May has not brought any relief for the city, activists said. The pact covers four zones in Syria where the rebels are fighting progovernment forces.
The activist-run Nabaa Media outlet released footage of thick smoke rising over the city after a string of blasts. It alleged the government was using napalm-like weapons. The footage was filmed Sunday. The Syrian general denied the claims.
Yeah, whatever. Keep trotting out those false claims while ignoring the white phosphorous and depleted uranium use.
--more--"
The other battlefield:
"US cyberweapons prove to be disappointing against ISIS" by David E. Sanger New York Times June 13, 2017
WASHINGTON — America’s fast-growing ranks of secret cyberwarriors have in recent years blown up nuclear centrifuges in Iran and turned to computer code and electronic warfare to sabotage North Korea’s missile launches, with mixed results.
Yeah, well, they only go after the bad guys and aren't behind any of the hacks, yup.
But since they began training their arsenal of cyberweapons on a more elusive target, Internet use by the Islamic State group, the results have been a consistent disappointment, US officials say.
One reason being, of course, that ISIS™ is an AmeriKan proxy and propaganda tool.
The effectiveness of the nation’s arsenal of cyberweapons has hit its limits, they have discovered, against an enemy that exploits the Internet largely to recruit, spread propaganda, and use encrypted communications, all of which can be quickly reconstituted after US teams freeze their computers or manipulate their data.
Then they will JUST HAVE TO STOP SPENDING MONEY on ALL THOSE PROGRAMS, 'eh?
I mean, you CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS, guys! You can't scoop up Reality Winner and then come back and say we can't find the terrorists!
It has been more than a year since the Pentagon said it was opening a new line of combat against the Islamic State, directing Cyber Command, then six years old, to mount computer-network attacks. The mission was clear: Disrupt the ability of ISIS to spread its message, attract new adherents, pay fighters, and circulate orders from commanders.
But after recent attacks in Britain and Iran claimed by the Islamic State, or ISIS, it has become clear that recruitment efforts and communications hubs reappear almost as quickly as they are torn down.
This is prompting officials to rethink how cyberwarfare techniques, first designed for fixed targets like nuclear facilities, must be refashioned to fight terrorist groups that are becoming more adept at turning the Web into a weapon.
Only one answer: shut it down.
“In general, there was some sense of disappointment in the overall ability for cyberoperations to land a major blow against ISIS,” said Joshua Geltzer, senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council until March.
“This is just much harder in practice than people think,’’ Geltzer said.
PFFFFFFFFT!
Even one of the rare successes against ISIS belongs at least in part to Israel, which was America’s partner in the attacks against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Israeli cyberoperators penetrated a small cell of bombmakers in Syria months ago, the officials said. That was how the United States learned the group was working to make explosives that fool airport X-ray machines by looking exactly like batteries for laptop computers.
Must be why ISIS™ never attacks Israel but only those all around it.
The information helped prompt a ban in March on large electronics in carry-on luggage on flights from 10 airports in eight Muslim-majority countries to the United States.
I was told they didn't actually follow through with the ban, but whatever.
--more--"
Related: Nuclear Attack Will Come From the Shadows
Now back to the $hadows with you!
**********************
"Roadside bomb hits US convoy in Afghanistan" New York Times June 12, 2017
JALALABAD, Afghanistan — Three civilians were killed after a roadside bomb hit a convoy of US soldiers Monday in Nangarhar province, in eastern Afghanistan, according to Afghan officials in the area.
The civilians were killed when soldiers opened fire after the explosion, according to a spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar.
OMG, it's like infamous Blackwater case in Iraq where there was gunfire and they just opened up all around them. These things happen far more than is reported, too!
So when does the $orry and $2500 bucks come, huh?!!!
The US military said that none of its personnel had been wounded. It added that though there was an exchange of gunfire after the bombing, it had received no official reports of civilian casualties.
Given the Afghan protests recently, I suspect they will be back out in the streets.
All six US soldiers who have been killed in Afghanistan in 2017 have died in Nangarhar province while fighting the Islamic State. The most recent three died Saturday in an apparent insider attack.
In a separate development, the Taliban’s second in command and head of the militant Haqqani network denied involvement in recent deadly attacks in Kabul and western Afghanistan, the Associated Press reported.....
If you run my June roll maybe you can get to the bottom of it.
--more--"
***********************
"Japan seeks to expand arms deals with Southeast Asia" by Mari Yamaguchi Associated Press June 12, 2017
CHIBA, Japan — A defense official said Monday that Japan is seeking to increase its sales of military equipment to Southeast Asian nations amid growing tensions with China and North Korea.
As if they have a certain $elf-intere$t in those tensions we are told our leaders are working feverishly to quell!
The move is part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s push to bolster Japan’s military role and its sales of defense equipment, especially in Southeast Asia, where China has expanded its own arms sales.
It's all so Bazaar.
Hideaki Watanabe, head of the Defense Ministry’s Acquisition Technology and Logistics Agency, said Japan will host a meeting Thursday with defense officials from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to discuss the sharing of equipment and technology.
He spoke Monday at an international arms exhibit near Tokyo that was attended by hundreds of defense officials and industry leaders from around the world.
Man, yesterday it was the Germans taking matters into their own hands and now the Japanese.
Watanabe said there have been aggressive attempts by nations in recent years to change the status quo, in an apparent reference to China’s building of artificial islands in disputed areas of the South China Sea.
And the U.S. will go to war with anyone to prevent that.
‘‘It is essential to maintain the open and stable sea under the rule of law,’’ he said. ‘‘Ensuring safety of navigation and flight contributes to the peace and prosperity of Japan and international society. Japan’s research and development of high-quality defense equipment contributes to the defense of Japan and elsewhere.’’
Japan’s defense industry at home is worth about $16 billion annually, a fraction of the country’s $470 billion auto industry.
Japan had restricted arms exports under its post-World War II war-renouncing constitution, limiting joint research and development to the United States under a bilateral security pact.
Since an easing of the rules in 2014, Japan now has joint research deals with Britain, Australia, and France.
To scale up the defense industry, Japan’s government has bolstered research funding to more than $90 million this year.
How is that Fukushima clean-up going?
Japan has been promoting the transfer of defense equipment to Southeast Asian countries to help their maritime security capabilities amid China’s growing presence in the South China Sea, but deals have been limited to the sale of TC-90 surveillance aircraft to the Philippines.
China already exports mostly low-cost military equipment to many Southeast Asian countries.
The arms exhibit, sponsored by the Japanese defense, foreign and industry ministries, included panel discussions focused on missile defense. North Korea has conducted several missile tests this year.
US defense giant Lockheed Martin and Japanese contractors Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries were among dozens of exhibitors from around the world who had booths at this year’s Mast Asia exhibit, just east of Tokyo.
Yes, war is good bu$ine$$. Why would anyone ever want to stop it?
--more--"
Time to shut the door and go grab some sushi.
***********************
Largest anti-Kremlin protests in years roll across Russia
Was my World lead so you know it is controlled opposition to sow destabilization of Putin.
And rather than watch some lame propaganda (and speaking of staged and scripted hoaxes), I suggest you catch some other interviews of the man. Watched the first part last night. Ollie is a little out there, but Putin is a logical and lucid man. Kind of made me ashamed of the ones I've lived under.
"On June 13, 1917, during World War I, a group of German Gotha bombers attacked London, killing 162 people.
In 1927, aviation hero Charles Lindbergh was honored with a ticker-tape parade in New York City.
He would later be vilified for this.
In 1935, James Braddock claimed the title of world heavyweight boxing champion from Max Baer in a 15-round fight in Queens.
Germans, Germans, Germans.
In 1957, the Mayflower II, a replica of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to America in 1620, arrived at Plymouth after a nearly two-month journey from England.
In 1966, the Supreme Court ruled in Miranda v. Arizona that criminal suspects had to be informed of their constitutional right to consult with an attorney and to remain silent.
In 1967, President Lyndon B Johnson nominated Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall to become the first black justice on the US Supreme Court.
In 1977, James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., was recaptured following his escape three days earlier from a Tennessee prison.
In 1997, a jury voted unanimously to give Timothy McVeigh the death penalty for the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.
Couple of patsies there. Just a job, man.
In 2007, insurgents blew up the two minarets of a revered Shi’ite shrine in Samarra, Iraq, a year after the shrine’s golden dome was destroyed in a bombing.
Those turned out to be U.S. false flags meant to strike at the very heart of Shi'ite Islam.
In 2016, a day after the Orlando, Fla., nightclub shooting rampage that claimed 49 victims, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton offered drastically different proposals for stemming the threat of terrorism and gun violence; Trump focused heavily on the nation’s immigration system (even though the shooter was US born) and redoubled his call for temporarily banning Muslims from the United States, while Clinton said she would prioritize stopping ‘‘lone wolf’’ attackers as president and reiterated her call for banning assault weapons....."
Then there is the Untold History of the World, nothing to take pride in.
Sunday, May 21, 2017
Sunday Globe Special: Kibbles & Bits
Think of this as your lunch....
"The key to saving ferrets from plague may be a peanut-butter treat" by Mead Gruver Associated Press March 18, 2017
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Feeding peanut butter kibbles to millions of prairie dogs — by flinging the treats from four-wheelers and dropping them from drones — could be the next big thing to help a spunky little weasel that almost went extinct.
Slinky with a robber-like black mask across its eyes, the endangered black-footed ferret is a fierce predator. The up to 2-foot-long weasel feeds almost exclusively on prairie dogs, rodents that live in vast colonies regularly decimated by plague outbreaks.
The disease keeps threatening the food supply of ferrets bred in captivity and reintroduced on the landscape. Biologists are increasingly optimistic that feeding plague vaccine to prairie dogs can improve the ferrets’ success rate.
Starting this fall, they hope to ramp up recent plague vaccination experiments to cover as much as 40 square miles of prairie dog colonies in several states in the West.
‘‘We’re not attempting to eradicate it. That would be very, very difficult at this point. We’re just trying to manage it on selected colonies,’’ said Tonie Rocke, who researches animal diseases with the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin.
They plan to treat prairie dog colonies with blueberry-sized vaccine pellets made with peanut butter, using a specially made ‘‘glorified gumball machine’’ to fling the pellets from all-terrain vehicles. They might also drop pellets from drones to avoid trampling the countryside.
‘‘Prairie dogs love it. They gobble it up as fast as they can,’’ said John Emmerich, a retired Wyoming Game and Fish Department deputy director who chairs Black-Footed Ferret Friends, a group working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the project.
At a rate of 40 to 50 pellets per acre, Emmerich figures they will need 1 million or more pellets for the job. A U.S. Department of Agriculture supply depot in Pocatello, Idaho, that also makes rodent poison for farmers will manufacture the pellets.
Plague, which killed millions of people in medieval Europe, wasn’t a problem for prairie dogs until it arrived in the U.S. over a century ago. The disease now routinely cycles through prairie dog colonies across the ferrets’ 12-state historical range.
Habitat loss to farming and poisoning by ranchers also has taken a toll on prairie dogs — and by extension the black-footed ferret, which lives in the rodents’ burrows. The ferrets were believed extinct until a ranch dog brought home a dead one near Meeteetse, Wyoming, in 1981.
Beginning in the 1990s, efforts to breed black-footed ferrets at a facility near Fort Collins, Colorado, and release them into the wild have been successful in the sense that the black-footed ferret is no longer teetering on the brink.
Black-footed ferrets recently have been introduced at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge near Denver and to the Meeteetse ranch where scientists collected the last known wild ferrets to start the captive-breeding program. Descendants of those ferrets have been reintroduced at 28 sites and eight states, Canada and Mexico.
But plague, which is spread by fleas, remains a threat to the prairie dog colonies where ferrets live, said Fish and Wildlife spokesman Ryan Moehring.
Biologists often treat the colonies with insecticide to combat fleas. Plague vaccine likewise would need to be applied regularly — once a year, because prairie dogs typically don’t live more than a few years, and new ones are born every year. But the vaccine could require a lot less work, especially if drones are used.
An estimated 300 black-footed ferrets now live in the wild. Getting them off the endangered list would require establishing 3,000 or more breeding adults on half a million acres — 780 square miles — of prairie-dog colonies, according to Fish and Wildlife.
The vaccine could help put that goal within reach.
‘‘We’ll see as we expand the acreage, and see how it performs, but I think so far the results are promising,’’ Moehring said.
--more--"
I think NYC should be worried, how about you?
Maybe he should just kill them all.
"American accused of aiding ISIS with $245 in gift cards" by Eric Lichtblau New York Times January 28, 2017
WASHINGTON — The FBI had a job offer for Nick Young, a veteran Washington transit officer: become an undercover informer for the bureau and gather information at local mosques on fellow Muslims who might pose a terrorism threat.
The clandestine work would be “a lot sexier” than his current job, Young remembered an agent named Ryan telling him. And it could pay him a lot of money if the intelligence was good.
Young turned him down. But it would not be the last time he would see the FBI agent.
In August, five years later, Young was summoned to the headquarters of the transit agency, Metro, where Ryan and other agents were waiting for him.
This time, the agent handcuffed Young on a charge of supporting the Islamic State — a case built by an informer who posed as a would-be terrorist fighter.
The prosecution of Young, the only law enforcement officer among more than 100 Americans who have been accused of helping the Islamic State, offers a revealing look at the FBI’s shadowy cat-and-mouse efforts to identify possible Islamic extremists — an effort President Trump has vowed to intensify.
The FBI is expanding its use of undercover operations to identify Islamic State sympathizers inside the United States who might travel overseas to help the terrorist group or commit attacks at home.
And looking for patsies to set up so they can swoop in and save the day, justifying all the tyranny and wa$te of resources in order to prove they are getting the job done.
So let's see, the FBI sets up the domestic terrorists and the CIA create, funds, and directs the foreign versions. That's how we get the Tsarnaevs.
Young’s lawyer says that the FBI entrapped him, with undercover operatives popping in and out of his life for at least six years. But law enforcement officials say Young represents one of their worst fears: that a longtime officer, with access to sensitive facilities, could be “radicalized” to support Islamic extremism.
He is charged with providing “material support” to the Islamic State, in the form of $245 worth of Google Play gift cards. Authorities say he gave the gift cards to a Muslim friend named Mo — in reality, an undercover informer — to support recruitment for the terrorist group.
Now, THERE is a SERIOUS SHADOW -- not like those other fools!
You get the ran$om in gift cards!
In interviews from jail, Young, a convert to Islam, portrayed himself and many other US Muslims under investigation as victims of religious persecution. He accused an “overzealous” FBI of “manufacturing” the case.
“I know for sure I wouldn’t have been targeted if I was an evangelic Christian or a Sikh or a Hindu or something,” said Young, 37.
“I’m not a terrorist,” he added. “Seeing these horrible allegations and the way they’re trying to paint me, it’s just a nightmare.”
Officials at the FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment on the case. In general, the FBI said, the investigative techniques used in such national security cases “are subject to vigorous oversight and require us to use the least intrusive means possible.”
OMFG!
Trump has declared that the country must do more to confront what he calls “radical Islamic terrorism,” including the possibility of expanding surveillance and intelligence operations, creating a “registry” of US Muslims, and reviving torture as an interrogation technique.
Those proposals have worried some civil liberties advocates, who say they are eager to see whether the Justice Department and the FBI seek to expand their investigative powers further in domestic terrorism cases.
Thus we are constantly treated to fake news in the form of foiled plots by self-created patsies.
Young sees himself as a pawn in that broader fight.
Young acknowledges holding passionate views about the Middle East and the “slaughter” of Syrians by the government of President Bashar Assad. On breaks from the transit agency, Young traveled to Libya twice in 2011 with body armor to join rebels fighting the Gadhafi regime.
OMG, he is a GOVERNMENT ASSET!!
“I didn’t kill anyone while I was there,” he said, laughing, but “I got shot at a lot.”
He insisted that he had never supported terrorists. He plans to take the witness stand at his trial, an unusual tactic for a terrorism suspect. “Nick doesn’t have anything to hide,” said Nicholas D. Smith, one of his lawyers.
As he waits for his trial date, he sits in a rural jail in Warsaw, Va. “My brain’s turning to mush,” he said.
What kind of pharmaceuticals are they feeding him?
He said he was under investigation for so long, it was almost inevitable that authorities would find a way to charge him. “At the end of the day, the crime I’m being accused of — a crime of sending gift cards — it would be laughable if it wasn’t really happening,” Young said.
And the charge they find is one they foisted on him.
--more--"
Yeah, it's either let in all the refugees, or let the FBI f*** us over.
Maybe all the turmoil at the top of the Trump Administration will cut down on the FBI-instigated false flags for a change. I mean, shootings are down.
"How civilian prosecution gave the US a key informant" by Adam Goldman and Benjamin Weiser New York Times January 27, 2017
WASHINGTON — One day in 2011, the top prosecutor in the system of military commissions set up after the Sept. 11 attacks to prosecute terrorists traveled to New York for a special meeting with Justice Department officials. A Somali terrorist, Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, was being held aboard a US warship after being captured in international waters off Yemen, and the official, John F. Murphy, wanted him tried at Guantánamo Bay before a military commission.
Yeah, you hold him (do they make these names up as an in-your-face-laugher or....) in international waters in some sort of nebulous gray area so he can be tortured.
In an early test of President Obama’s belief that international terrorists could be successfully prosecuted in the criminal courts, Murphy was overruled. Warsame was prosecuted in federal court in Manhattan, and after pleading guilty to providing material support to al-Shabab and al-Qaida in Yemen and to other charges, he became one of the nation’s most important terrorism informants.
To Justice Department and FBI officials, their success in prosecuting Warsame and eliciting important information from him was proof that an alternative legal system was not needed to keep the US safe from terrorism. But that belief — a founding principle of Obama’s national security strategy — is about to be challenged by his successor.
Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, President Trump’s nominee for attorney general, has long believed that the Obama administration sacrificed valuable intelligence by bringing terrorism cases in federal court. Along with other Republicans in Congress, he has argued that the isolated military prison at Guantánamo is where such terrorists should be sent and tried.
Trump is expected to formally endorse that view with an executive order keeping Guantánamo open.
But a look at Warsame’s case — and the substantial cooperation he provided to the military and law enforcement — suggests it could again become a flashpoint in a debate over which system — civilian or military — is best to handle terrorism cases.
Current and former law enforcement officials, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because many details about Warsame’s value as a witness remain secret, agreed on his importance. Among informants in federal custody, the officials said, he ranks among a handful whose information seriously disrupted terrorist plots and contributed to winning convictions.
Warsame provided crucial intelligence about al-Shabab and al-Qaida leaders and helped thwart a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia, the officials said. His assistance also helped in the hunt to find Anwar al-Awlaki, an American imam who became al-Qaida in Yemen’s chief propagandist; and it has underpinned terrorism prosecutions in federal courts in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Minnesota. With Warsame’s cooperation, authorities also have secretly charged at least a dozen terrorists, including a top al-Shabab commander, who remain at large overseas.
The dispute over where Warsame should be prosecuted occurred more than a year after the debate over where to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the admitted mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and four other detainees accused in the attacks.
After they waterboarded him like 183 times, and when that didn't work they tortured his kids in front of him. Screaming children is a good way to get someone to confess to anything.
Furthermore, what this story does is support the underlying narrative in the GWOT is legitimate and based on facts when it is not. It was a false flag operation for many reasons, the uppermost being USraeli hegemony over the planet.
The Obama administration ultimately dropped a plan to try them in federal court in Manhattan after strong opposition from local officials, deeply disappointing prosecutors who saw the cases as the best chance to hold the men responsible, but it turned out that it has been hard to build a functioning judicial system from scratch, let alone a court that operates at a remote base far from where the judge and lawyers live.
Contributing to years of delays, defense lawyers have been able to mount repeated challenges to every procedural step because the rules of the tribunals system are untested, unlike those of civilian court.
The use of plea deals at Guantánamo is also largely untested, and because the government maintains that it can hold an al-Qaida prisoner indefinitely as a wartime detainee even after he serves a sentence or is acquitted, military prosecutors may not be able to assure someone who seeks to cooperate that he will be released after serving his sentence.
And thus the United States government can never again criticize any other nation's detention and imprisonment policies.
In contrast, the value of cooperation deals in federal terrorism prosecutions has been extremely effective.
--more--"
I thought he was struck down in the drone wars.
"The key to saving ferrets from plague may be a peanut-butter treat" by Mead Gruver Associated Press March 18, 2017
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Feeding peanut butter kibbles to millions of prairie dogs — by flinging the treats from four-wheelers and dropping them from drones — could be the next big thing to help a spunky little weasel that almost went extinct.
Slinky with a robber-like black mask across its eyes, the endangered black-footed ferret is a fierce predator. The up to 2-foot-long weasel feeds almost exclusively on prairie dogs, rodents that live in vast colonies regularly decimated by plague outbreaks.
The disease keeps threatening the food supply of ferrets bred in captivity and reintroduced on the landscape. Biologists are increasingly optimistic that feeding plague vaccine to prairie dogs can improve the ferrets’ success rate.
Starting this fall, they hope to ramp up recent plague vaccination experiments to cover as much as 40 square miles of prairie dog colonies in several states in the West.
‘‘We’re not attempting to eradicate it. That would be very, very difficult at this point. We’re just trying to manage it on selected colonies,’’ said Tonie Rocke, who researches animal diseases with the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin.
They plan to treat prairie dog colonies with blueberry-sized vaccine pellets made with peanut butter, using a specially made ‘‘glorified gumball machine’’ to fling the pellets from all-terrain vehicles. They might also drop pellets from drones to avoid trampling the countryside.
‘‘Prairie dogs love it. They gobble it up as fast as they can,’’ said John Emmerich, a retired Wyoming Game and Fish Department deputy director who chairs Black-Footed Ferret Friends, a group working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the project.
At a rate of 40 to 50 pellets per acre, Emmerich figures they will need 1 million or more pellets for the job. A U.S. Department of Agriculture supply depot in Pocatello, Idaho, that also makes rodent poison for farmers will manufacture the pellets.
Plague, which killed millions of people in medieval Europe, wasn’t a problem for prairie dogs until it arrived in the U.S. over a century ago. The disease now routinely cycles through prairie dog colonies across the ferrets’ 12-state historical range.
Habitat loss to farming and poisoning by ranchers also has taken a toll on prairie dogs — and by extension the black-footed ferret, which lives in the rodents’ burrows. The ferrets were believed extinct until a ranch dog brought home a dead one near Meeteetse, Wyoming, in 1981.
Beginning in the 1990s, efforts to breed black-footed ferrets at a facility near Fort Collins, Colorado, and release them into the wild have been successful in the sense that the black-footed ferret is no longer teetering on the brink.
Black-footed ferrets recently have been introduced at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge near Denver and to the Meeteetse ranch where scientists collected the last known wild ferrets to start the captive-breeding program. Descendants of those ferrets have been reintroduced at 28 sites and eight states, Canada and Mexico.
But plague, which is spread by fleas, remains a threat to the prairie dog colonies where ferrets live, said Fish and Wildlife spokesman Ryan Moehring.
Biologists often treat the colonies with insecticide to combat fleas. Plague vaccine likewise would need to be applied regularly — once a year, because prairie dogs typically don’t live more than a few years, and new ones are born every year. But the vaccine could require a lot less work, especially if drones are used.
An estimated 300 black-footed ferrets now live in the wild. Getting them off the endangered list would require establishing 3,000 or more breeding adults on half a million acres — 780 square miles — of prairie-dog colonies, according to Fish and Wildlife.
The vaccine could help put that goal within reach.
‘‘We’ll see as we expand the acreage, and see how it performs, but I think so far the results are promising,’’ Moehring said.
--more--"
I think NYC should be worried, how about you?
Maybe he should just kill them all.
**********
"American accused of aiding ISIS with $245 in gift cards" by Eric Lichtblau New York Times January 28, 2017
WASHINGTON — The FBI had a job offer for Nick Young, a veteran Washington transit officer: become an undercover informer for the bureau and gather information at local mosques on fellow Muslims who might pose a terrorism threat.
The clandestine work would be “a lot sexier” than his current job, Young remembered an agent named Ryan telling him. And it could pay him a lot of money if the intelligence was good.
Young turned him down. But it would not be the last time he would see the FBI agent.
In August, five years later, Young was summoned to the headquarters of the transit agency, Metro, where Ryan and other agents were waiting for him.
This time, the agent handcuffed Young on a charge of supporting the Islamic State — a case built by an informer who posed as a would-be terrorist fighter.
The prosecution of Young, the only law enforcement officer among more than 100 Americans who have been accused of helping the Islamic State, offers a revealing look at the FBI’s shadowy cat-and-mouse efforts to identify possible Islamic extremists — an effort President Trump has vowed to intensify.
The FBI is expanding its use of undercover operations to identify Islamic State sympathizers inside the United States who might travel overseas to help the terrorist group or commit attacks at home.
And looking for patsies to set up so they can swoop in and save the day, justifying all the tyranny and wa$te of resources in order to prove they are getting the job done.
So let's see, the FBI sets up the domestic terrorists and the CIA create, funds, and directs the foreign versions. That's how we get the Tsarnaevs.
Young’s lawyer says that the FBI entrapped him, with undercover operatives popping in and out of his life for at least six years. But law enforcement officials say Young represents one of their worst fears: that a longtime officer, with access to sensitive facilities, could be “radicalized” to support Islamic extremism.
He is charged with providing “material support” to the Islamic State, in the form of $245 worth of Google Play gift cards. Authorities say he gave the gift cards to a Muslim friend named Mo — in reality, an undercover informer — to support recruitment for the terrorist group.
Now, THERE is a SERIOUS SHADOW -- not like those other fools!
You get the ran$om in gift cards!
In interviews from jail, Young, a convert to Islam, portrayed himself and many other US Muslims under investigation as victims of religious persecution. He accused an “overzealous” FBI of “manufacturing” the case.
“I know for sure I wouldn’t have been targeted if I was an evangelic Christian or a Sikh or a Hindu or something,” said Young, 37.
“I’m not a terrorist,” he added. “Seeing these horrible allegations and the way they’re trying to paint me, it’s just a nightmare.”
Officials at the FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment on the case. In general, the FBI said, the investigative techniques used in such national security cases “are subject to vigorous oversight and require us to use the least intrusive means possible.”
OMFG!
Trump has declared that the country must do more to confront what he calls “radical Islamic terrorism,” including the possibility of expanding surveillance and intelligence operations, creating a “registry” of US Muslims, and reviving torture as an interrogation technique.
Those proposals have worried some civil liberties advocates, who say they are eager to see whether the Justice Department and the FBI seek to expand their investigative powers further in domestic terrorism cases.
Thus we are constantly treated to fake news in the form of foiled plots by self-created patsies.
Young sees himself as a pawn in that broader fight.
Young acknowledges holding passionate views about the Middle East and the “slaughter” of Syrians by the government of President Bashar Assad. On breaks from the transit agency, Young traveled to Libya twice in 2011 with body armor to join rebels fighting the Gadhafi regime.
OMG, he is a GOVERNMENT ASSET!!
“I didn’t kill anyone while I was there,” he said, laughing, but “I got shot at a lot.”
He insisted that he had never supported terrorists. He plans to take the witness stand at his trial, an unusual tactic for a terrorism suspect. “Nick doesn’t have anything to hide,” said Nicholas D. Smith, one of his lawyers.
As he waits for his trial date, he sits in a rural jail in Warsaw, Va. “My brain’s turning to mush,” he said.
What kind of pharmaceuticals are they feeding him?
He said he was under investigation for so long, it was almost inevitable that authorities would find a way to charge him. “At the end of the day, the crime I’m being accused of — a crime of sending gift cards — it would be laughable if it wasn’t really happening,” Young said.
And the charge they find is one they foisted on him.
--more--"
Yeah, it's either let in all the refugees, or let the FBI f*** us over.
Maybe all the turmoil at the top of the Trump Administration will cut down on the FBI-instigated false flags for a change. I mean, shootings are down.
**********
"How civilian prosecution gave the US a key informant" by Adam Goldman and Benjamin Weiser New York Times January 27, 2017
WASHINGTON — One day in 2011, the top prosecutor in the system of military commissions set up after the Sept. 11 attacks to prosecute terrorists traveled to New York for a special meeting with Justice Department officials. A Somali terrorist, Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, was being held aboard a US warship after being captured in international waters off Yemen, and the official, John F. Murphy, wanted him tried at Guantánamo Bay before a military commission.
Yeah, you hold him (do they make these names up as an in-your-face-laugher or....) in international waters in some sort of nebulous gray area so he can be tortured.
In an early test of President Obama’s belief that international terrorists could be successfully prosecuted in the criminal courts, Murphy was overruled. Warsame was prosecuted in federal court in Manhattan, and after pleading guilty to providing material support to al-Shabab and al-Qaida in Yemen and to other charges, he became one of the nation’s most important terrorism informants.
To Justice Department and FBI officials, their success in prosecuting Warsame and eliciting important information from him was proof that an alternative legal system was not needed to keep the US safe from terrorism. But that belief — a founding principle of Obama’s national security strategy — is about to be challenged by his successor.
Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, President Trump’s nominee for attorney general, has long believed that the Obama administration sacrificed valuable intelligence by bringing terrorism cases in federal court. Along with other Republicans in Congress, he has argued that the isolated military prison at Guantánamo is where such terrorists should be sent and tried.
Trump is expected to formally endorse that view with an executive order keeping Guantánamo open.
But a look at Warsame’s case — and the substantial cooperation he provided to the military and law enforcement — suggests it could again become a flashpoint in a debate over which system — civilian or military — is best to handle terrorism cases.
Current and former law enforcement officials, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because many details about Warsame’s value as a witness remain secret, agreed on his importance. Among informants in federal custody, the officials said, he ranks among a handful whose information seriously disrupted terrorist plots and contributed to winning convictions.
Warsame provided crucial intelligence about al-Shabab and al-Qaida leaders and helped thwart a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia, the officials said. His assistance also helped in the hunt to find Anwar al-Awlaki, an American imam who became al-Qaida in Yemen’s chief propagandist; and it has underpinned terrorism prosecutions in federal courts in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Minnesota. With Warsame’s cooperation, authorities also have secretly charged at least a dozen terrorists, including a top al-Shabab commander, who remain at large overseas.
The dispute over where Warsame should be prosecuted occurred more than a year after the debate over where to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the admitted mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and four other detainees accused in the attacks.
After they waterboarded him like 183 times, and when that didn't work they tortured his kids in front of him. Screaming children is a good way to get someone to confess to anything.
Furthermore, what this story does is support the underlying narrative in the GWOT is legitimate and based on facts when it is not. It was a false flag operation for many reasons, the uppermost being USraeli hegemony over the planet.
The Obama administration ultimately dropped a plan to try them in federal court in Manhattan after strong opposition from local officials, deeply disappointing prosecutors who saw the cases as the best chance to hold the men responsible, but it turned out that it has been hard to build a functioning judicial system from scratch, let alone a court that operates at a remote base far from where the judge and lawyers live.
Contributing to years of delays, defense lawyers have been able to mount repeated challenges to every procedural step because the rules of the tribunals system are untested, unlike those of civilian court.
The use of plea deals at Guantánamo is also largely untested, and because the government maintains that it can hold an al-Qaida prisoner indefinitely as a wartime detainee even after he serves a sentence or is acquitted, military prosecutors may not be able to assure someone who seeks to cooperate that he will be released after serving his sentence.
And thus the United States government can never again criticize any other nation's detention and imprisonment policies.
In contrast, the value of cooperation deals in federal terrorism prosecutions has been extremely effective.
--more--"
I thought he was struck down in the drone wars.
Friday, May 12, 2017
Al-CIA-Duh Gets Time Off For Good Behavior
"Al-Qaida member who flipped and helped US gets time served" by TOM HAYS Associated Press May 12, 2017
NEW YORK — A federal judge on Thursday decided to spare a terrorist known as Bashir the American a long prison term after he switched sides and became a prized US government cooperator, sentencing him to time served, about eight years.
The admitted terrorist, Bryant Neal Vinas, grew up in obscurity on Long Island but became a militant Muslim convert, relocated to an outlaw region of Pakistan, and schemed with senior Al Qaeda members on how best to attack the Long Island Rail Road.
Vinas, called Bashir al-Ameriki, was sentenced in federal court in Brooklyn on charges he tried to kill US soldiers and provide support to Al Qaeda before Pakistani authorities captured him in 2008 and turned him over to the United States.
In a letter to US District Judge Nicholas Garaufis, prosecutors wrote that once in custody, Vinas, 34, of Patchogue, eagerly became what ‘‘may have been the single most valuable cooperating witness’’ in efforts to identify members of Al Qaeda, pinpoint their hideouts, and disrupt their terror plots when the nation was still reeling from the Sept. 11 attacks. Vinas will be released in 90 days and will be on probation for life.
Prosecutors haven’t revealed details of classified FBI reports they gave to the judge to show the depth of cooperation.
Defense lawyers argued the cooperation came at great risk and should be rewarded with a term of time served.
Looks like one of their agents.
--more--"
FLASHBACKS:
"US-born man who fought with Al Qaeda pleads guilty; Cooperates with US officials after conspiracy charges" by Sebastian Rotella and Josh Meyer, Los Angeles Times | July 23, 2009
I SMELL "Al-CIA-Duh"
WASHINGTON - An American from Long Island, N.Y., who was captured while fighting as an Al Qaeda militant in Pakistan has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to commit murder outside the United States and is now cooperating with authorities, according to a federal indictment and interviews with US and European officials.
Bryant Neal Vinas, 26, is one of a handful of Americans known to have made the trek to Al Qaeda’s secret Pakistani compounds, and his cooperation is opening a rare window into the world of Western militants in the network’s hide-outs, anti-terrorism officials said.
This is such absolute s***, readers!
Vinas has admitted to meeting Al Qaeda operations chiefs and giving them information for a potential attack on New York commuter trains, conversations that resulted in a public alert in November, said the officials, who requested anonymity because the case is ongoing.
So he was at Langley to talk with his case officer, huh?
Vinas told investigators that he fired rockets during a militant attack on a US military base in Afghanistan, the officials said. Pakistani forces captured him in November, and he is in US custody.
What a crock!
An indictment was unsealed yesterday after repeated queries from the Los Angeles Times in recent weeks. Until then, the case had remained a closely guarded secret at the heart of interconnected investigations in at least seven countries.
Yeah, they don't like to expose their inform...., 'er, assets or agents!
“It is a massive case,’’ said a US Justice Department official.
The US-born son of immigrants from Peru and Argentina, Vinas was raised a Roman Catholic and played baseball in tidy working-class suburbs where Elks lodges mixed with taquerias. His unlikely transformation into an Al Qaeda fighter nicknamed “Bashir el Amriki’’ (Bashir the American) underscores fears that other Americans followed the same route, officials said.
Yeah, I guess now that ADAM GADAHN has been OUTED as Adam PEARLMAN they need a NEW AmeriKan "Al-CIA-Duh," huh?
“His background is clearly unusual,’’ said a senior European anti-terrorism official. “I am not aware of other Americans who went with him or who have trained recently in [Pakistan]. . . . He stands out. A Latino American is an unusual profile.’’
Really?: Memory Hole: What Four Years of Torture Will Do to an Innocent Man
The FURTHER YOU READ the MORE the PROPAGANDA REEKS!!
Since his capture, Vinas has been talkative and cooperative. He has provided a detailed account of his sojourn and lengthy testimony for upcoming terrorism trials in Europe, the officials said.
He's an AGENT, INFORMANT or ASSET, readers!!!
In March, he gave a statement to a Belgian magistrate and investigators in New York that will be used as evidence against three jailed Belgians who admitted to training with Al Qaeda, according to European and US officials. Vinas’s father says he does not know where his son is.
Or even who he is.
“The FBI asked me all kinds of questions about him, but they don’t tell me nothing,’’ said Juan Vinas of Patchogue, N.Y.
Even during the years when Osama bin Laden’s Afghan camps trained thousands, US recruits were scarce.
Ahem: U.S. Training Terrorists in Nevada
Bryant Vinas told investigators that he arrived in December 2007 in the northwestern Pakistani badlands dominated by Al Qaeda and the Taliban, according to anti-terrorism officials.
Yeah, gimme that salt shaker; I need a grain.
--more--"
Did you see what he looks like?
UPDATE:
"Former Al Qaeda recruiter now a voice against jihad" New York Times August 29, 2016
WASHINGTON — A former recruiter for Al Qaeda who was imprisoned in the United States is now at the forefront of an experiment to counter the pull of groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda.
It would be nice if the U.S. government and its allies weren't playing both sides of this.
In the four years that he ran the Revolution Muslim website out of his walk-up apartment in Brooklyn, Jesse Morton became one of the most prolific Al Qaeda operatives, luring numerous Americans to the group’s violent ideology.
The men and women he inspired through his online posts and tutorials were accused of plots that included flying a remote-controlled plane strapped with explosives into the Pentagon and trying to kill a Swedish cartoonist who satirized the prophet Mohammed.
One of his collaborators was killed in a drone strike in Yemen, where he had joined Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Several are now fighting for the Islamic State.
After a stint as an FBI informant and his release from prison last year, Morton, 37, has been hired as a fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, where he will research the very ideology he once spread.
Meaning he always was one.
A native of Pennsylvania, Morton was radicalized in a Virginia prison while doing time for a drug offense. He later helped create the radical recruitment website and was arrested by US agents in 2011 on charges of inciting support for a militant group.
Although countries like Britain have for years been putting former extremists to work in think tanks to provide authentic voices against radical ideology, Morton is the first former jihadist to step into this public a role in the United States.
That has not come without some anxiety for his new employer, said Lorenzo Vidino, the director of the extremism program at George Washington’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security.
Vidino met with Morton after his release in February 2015, beginning a yearlong vetting process that involved interviewing seven law enforcement officials directly involved in his case.
“There was not a single dissenting voice,” Vidino said.
In an interview this month, after he was asked why anyone should believe he had truly changed, Morton insisted that he was trying to make amends...."
What a radical idea, huh?
NEW YORK — A federal judge on Thursday decided to spare a terrorist known as Bashir the American a long prison term after he switched sides and became a prized US government cooperator, sentencing him to time served, about eight years.
The admitted terrorist, Bryant Neal Vinas, grew up in obscurity on Long Island but became a militant Muslim convert, relocated to an outlaw region of Pakistan, and schemed with senior Al Qaeda members on how best to attack the Long Island Rail Road.
Vinas, called Bashir al-Ameriki, was sentenced in federal court in Brooklyn on charges he tried to kill US soldiers and provide support to Al Qaeda before Pakistani authorities captured him in 2008 and turned him over to the United States.
In a letter to US District Judge Nicholas Garaufis, prosecutors wrote that once in custody, Vinas, 34, of Patchogue, eagerly became what ‘‘may have been the single most valuable cooperating witness’’ in efforts to identify members of Al Qaeda, pinpoint their hideouts, and disrupt their terror plots when the nation was still reeling from the Sept. 11 attacks. Vinas will be released in 90 days and will be on probation for life.
Prosecutors haven’t revealed details of classified FBI reports they gave to the judge to show the depth of cooperation.
Defense lawyers argued the cooperation came at great risk and should be rewarded with a term of time served.
Looks like one of their agents.
--more--"
FLASHBACKS:
"US-born man who fought with Al Qaeda pleads guilty; Cooperates with US officials after conspiracy charges" by Sebastian Rotella and Josh Meyer, Los Angeles Times | July 23, 2009
I SMELL "Al-CIA-Duh"
WASHINGTON - An American from Long Island, N.Y., who was captured while fighting as an Al Qaeda militant in Pakistan has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to commit murder outside the United States and is now cooperating with authorities, according to a federal indictment and interviews with US and European officials.
Bryant Neal Vinas, 26, is one of a handful of Americans known to have made the trek to Al Qaeda’s secret Pakistani compounds, and his cooperation is opening a rare window into the world of Western militants in the network’s hide-outs, anti-terrorism officials said.
This is such absolute s***, readers!
Vinas has admitted to meeting Al Qaeda operations chiefs and giving them information for a potential attack on New York commuter trains, conversations that resulted in a public alert in November, said the officials, who requested anonymity because the case is ongoing.
So he was at Langley to talk with his case officer, huh?
Vinas told investigators that he fired rockets during a militant attack on a US military base in Afghanistan, the officials said. Pakistani forces captured him in November, and he is in US custody.
What a crock!
An indictment was unsealed yesterday after repeated queries from the Los Angeles Times in recent weeks. Until then, the case had remained a closely guarded secret at the heart of interconnected investigations in at least seven countries.
Yeah, they don't like to expose their inform...., 'er, assets or agents!
“It is a massive case,’’ said a US Justice Department official.
The US-born son of immigrants from Peru and Argentina, Vinas was raised a Roman Catholic and played baseball in tidy working-class suburbs where Elks lodges mixed with taquerias. His unlikely transformation into an Al Qaeda fighter nicknamed “Bashir el Amriki’’ (Bashir the American) underscores fears that other Americans followed the same route, officials said.
Yeah, I guess now that ADAM GADAHN has been OUTED as Adam PEARLMAN they need a NEW AmeriKan "Al-CIA-Duh," huh?
“His background is clearly unusual,’’ said a senior European anti-terrorism official. “I am not aware of other Americans who went with him or who have trained recently in [Pakistan]. . . . He stands out. A Latino American is an unusual profile.’’
Really?: Memory Hole: What Four Years of Torture Will Do to an Innocent Man
The FURTHER YOU READ the MORE the PROPAGANDA REEKS!!
Since his capture, Vinas has been talkative and cooperative. He has provided a detailed account of his sojourn and lengthy testimony for upcoming terrorism trials in Europe, the officials said.
He's an AGENT, INFORMANT or ASSET, readers!!!
In March, he gave a statement to a Belgian magistrate and investigators in New York that will be used as evidence against three jailed Belgians who admitted to training with Al Qaeda, according to European and US officials. Vinas’s father says he does not know where his son is.
Or even who he is.
“The FBI asked me all kinds of questions about him, but they don’t tell me nothing,’’ said Juan Vinas of Patchogue, N.Y.
Even during the years when Osama bin Laden’s Afghan camps trained thousands, US recruits were scarce.
Ahem: U.S. Training Terrorists in Nevada
Bryant Vinas told investigators that he arrived in December 2007 in the northwestern Pakistani badlands dominated by Al Qaeda and the Taliban, according to anti-terrorism officials.
Yeah, gimme that salt shaker; I need a grain.
--more--"
Did you see what he looks like?
UPDATE:
"Former Al Qaeda recruiter now a voice against jihad" New York Times August 29, 2016
WASHINGTON — A former recruiter for Al Qaeda who was imprisoned in the United States is now at the forefront of an experiment to counter the pull of groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda.
It would be nice if the U.S. government and its allies weren't playing both sides of this.
In the four years that he ran the Revolution Muslim website out of his walk-up apartment in Brooklyn, Jesse Morton became one of the most prolific Al Qaeda operatives, luring numerous Americans to the group’s violent ideology.
The men and women he inspired through his online posts and tutorials were accused of plots that included flying a remote-controlled plane strapped with explosives into the Pentagon and trying to kill a Swedish cartoonist who satirized the prophet Mohammed.
One of his collaborators was killed in a drone strike in Yemen, where he had joined Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Several are now fighting for the Islamic State.
After a stint as an FBI informant and his release from prison last year, Morton, 37, has been hired as a fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, where he will research the very ideology he once spread.
Meaning he always was one.
A native of Pennsylvania, Morton was radicalized in a Virginia prison while doing time for a drug offense. He later helped create the radical recruitment website and was arrested by US agents in 2011 on charges of inciting support for a militant group.
Although countries like Britain have for years been putting former extremists to work in think tanks to provide authentic voices against radical ideology, Morton is the first former jihadist to step into this public a role in the United States.
That has not come without some anxiety for his new employer, said Lorenzo Vidino, the director of the extremism program at George Washington’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security.
Vidino met with Morton after his release in February 2015, beginning a yearlong vetting process that involved interviewing seven law enforcement officials directly involved in his case.
“There was not a single dissenting voice,” Vidino said.
In an interview this month, after he was asked why anyone should believe he had truly changed, Morton insisted that he was trying to make amends...."
What a radical idea, huh?
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