What Trump’s Decision to Abandon Syrian Kurds Means for Israel
By Yochanan Visser
Israel Today
October 11, 2019
US President Donald J. Trump just created another war-zone in Syria when he, after a phone call with Turkish autocratic leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, gave his blessing to a new Turkish incursion in Syria.
Erdogan waited with the new invasion in Syria until Trump finally gave in and ordered the immediate withdrawal of US Special Forces who had been advising the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) during the war against ISIS.
Erdogan claims the Kurdish YPG militia, which forms the backbone of the SDF, is a branch of the outlawed Turkish PKK, the Kurdish Workers Party and brands the militia a “terrorist organization”.
Trump apparently believes Erdogan and falsely claimed in a Tweet that the Syrian Kurds had been terrorizing Turkey for decades.
The President later claimed that the US had done more than enough for the Kurds and even accused them of failing to help the US Army during the invasion in Normandy in 1944 when the allied forces landed in France to finish off Hitler’s army.
Over the past two days more than 100 Syrians died after Turkish warplanes and artillery shelled more than 180 targets in what the Kurds call Rojava, the autonomous region along the Syrian-Turkish border.
The Turkish offensive against the Syrian Kurds was labeled ‘Operation Peace Spring’ and has already driven 60.000 people from their homes according to Syrian human rights organizations.
On Thursday, the Israeli government finally reacted to the Turkish aggression against the Kurds, a people of 40 million that has been seeking independence for more than 100 years.
Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu was careful not to criticize his friend in the White House in Washington DC but nevertheless condemned the Turkish invasion and warned against “ethnic cleansing” the Kurdish people which he called “gallant”.
Netanyahu also offered humanitarian assistance to the Kurds but stopped short of announcing punitive measures against Turkey which is one of Israel’s biggest trade partners despite bad diplomatic relations and repeated rants against the Jewish state by Erdogan who uses to compare the IDF to Hitler’s Nazi army.
Dozens of IDF reservists earlier called upon the Israeli government to provide military and humanitarian aid to the Syrian Kurds and not to leave them defenseless in light of the Turkish aggression.
“We, as Israelis and Jews, must not stand by when we see another nation abandoned by its allies and left defenseless,” Maj. (res) Yair Fink stated in an online petition which was signed by dozens of other IDF reservists.
The petition, furthermore, stated that the IDF reservists “remember very well the blood of our people, what happens when the nations of the world abandon the fate of a people.”
“Israel is a country that has the means to help the Kurdish people, and now is the time to do so,” the petition stated.
“We know that there are broad strategic implications here, and of course we are not fully aware of the overall picture, we, who have been educated on the values of personal examples and the sanctity of life, cannot help but feel it at this time and would be happy to assist in any action,”the group of reservists added.
Israeli experts familiar with the strategic situation in the Middle East and Israel’s many security challenges expressed their dismay with Trump’s decision and said that Israel has no one to rely on in light of the threats it is facing.
Major General (Res) Amos Gilad, the former director of the IDF’s military intelligence branch said the Kurds “were abandoned in the most ruthless way” and that this should trouble Israel seriously.
Gilad claimed that Trump’s Middle East policies have been negatively affecting Israel and harshly criticized Trump’s inactivity in light of Iran’s recent aggressive actions against Saudi Arabia which vital oil installations were bombed by Iranian drones and cruise missiles in September.
“His no reaction policy when Iran attacks Saudi Arabian oil facilities or when Iran shoots down an American drone projects weakness. That is bad for Israel since American deterrence is Israeli deterrence as well,” Gilad told Israel radio.
Major General (Res) Amiram Levin, the former commander of the IDF’s Northern Command, concurred and even claimed that Trump is no friend of Israel.
“For two years now I have been warning that Israeli policy is based on the false assumption that Trump is the great friend. It is about time Israel understands that as long as Trump is in power, Israel has no one to rely on,” Levin told The Middle East Eye claiming that the threat Iran is posing to Israel is not the greatest danger to the Jewish state.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, seemed to have internalized that Israel cannot rely on the US President when it comes to matters of overall security situation.
During a speech at the memorial service for the soldiers killed in the Yom Kippur War, at the Herzl Memorial Hall in Jerusalem the Israeli caretaker PM kept mum on the situation in Syria but also conveyed the same message as Levin and Gilad.
“We always remember and apply the basic rule that guides us: Israel will defend itself, on its own, in the face of every threat,” the longest serving Israeli Prime Minister stated.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Israelis must be wondering if Trump will eventually abandon them because they did not help the U.S. with Normandy.
Saturday, October 12, 2019
PUNISHMENT DOES SERVE AS A CRIME DETERRENT
Vanishing Violence: Youth Crime Continues Historic Drop Across US
LAPPL News Watch
October 11, 2019
Youth crime continues to plummet across the country, with arrests of people under age 18 falling for the 13th straight year and reaching lows not seen in at least six decades, new FBI figures show.
Two decades after fear of “superpredator” teens spurred a wave of tightened punishment in California and beyond, the landscape is almost unrecognizable.
The number of juveniles arrested nationwide declined 11% from 2017 to 2018 alone, compared to a 2% drop for adults.
Arrests of young people for violent crimes — rape, robbery, assault and murder — fell 5%, while they actually increased slightly for those 18 and older.
The 2018 arrest rate among juveniles — 21.3 per 1,000 youths — is half of what it was in the 1960s and less than one-quarter of what it was in the mid-1990s, at the peak of a youth crime spike, according to an analysis of the FBI data provided to The San Francisco Chronicle by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco.
LAPPL News Watch
October 11, 2019
Youth crime continues to plummet across the country, with arrests of people under age 18 falling for the 13th straight year and reaching lows not seen in at least six decades, new FBI figures show.
Two decades after fear of “superpredator” teens spurred a wave of tightened punishment in California and beyond, the landscape is almost unrecognizable.
The number of juveniles arrested nationwide declined 11% from 2017 to 2018 alone, compared to a 2% drop for adults.
Arrests of young people for violent crimes — rape, robbery, assault and murder — fell 5%, while they actually increased slightly for those 18 and older.
The 2018 arrest rate among juveniles — 21.3 per 1,000 youths — is half of what it was in the 1960s and less than one-quarter of what it was in the mid-1990s, at the peak of a youth crime spike, according to an analysis of the FBI data provided to The San Francisco Chronicle by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco.
POT ADVOCATES WOULD SAY PEOPLE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GET HIGH ON NUTMEG AS LONG AS THEY DO NOT HARM ANYONE ELSE
Teenager, 17, is rushed to hospital after overdosing on NUTMEG which left him pacing, vomiting and having muscle spasms
By Jack Elsom
Daily Nail
October 11, 2019
A teenager was scrambled to hospital in a trance-like state after overdosing on the popular spice nutmeg.
Paramedics found the 17-year-old pacing and muttering under his breath, unable to answer the most 'simple' of questions, vomiting and making involuntary muscle movements.
Initially baffled by the mysterious symptoms, doctors later discovered the boy had snorted a tablespoon of nutmeg - which does not show up in drug screenings.
The unnamed boy, who is thought to be from New York, survived his overdose, to which there is currently no antidote.
But now medics are using his unusual case to highlight the harmful effects of the common festive spice often added to lattes.
Because unbeknownst to most people who sprinkle the ingredient on their food and drink, nutmeg contains an oil which breaks down into MMDA - a psychedelic drug similar to the recreational MDMA.
Lead author Professor Bernard Beckerman of the City University of New York told the story of the unnamed teenager in the Complementary Therapies in Medicine journal.
On a Friday night, emergency service crews were scrambled to his parents' home after receiving reports of a 'disoriented male'.
They arrived to find him pacing the living room while talking to himself in a clear state of unrest.
The paramedics began asking him some routine questions - the boy gazed at them with big dilated pupils and was incapable of responding coherently.
The crew tried to apply an oxygen mask, but the restless unnamed boy took it off before suddenly walking away, seemingly involuntarily, and throwing up.
The teenager was then stretchered into an ambulance and whisked to hospital for treatment.
His parents – who said they last saw him earlier on in the afternoon in a 'normal state of health' – revealed he wasn't taking any medications.
They also told doctors that they weren't aware of him ever using any illicit drugs, according to the case report.
But, suspecting an overdose, the medics asked to rummage through the boy's room and found a cannabis-filled cigarette stashed away in a desk drawer along with a half-empty bottle of ground nutmeg.
Both items were taken with them to the hospital and turned over to the emergency department medical staff.
In hospital, the teenager admitted to snorting 'at least' one tablespoon of nutmeg – an amount considered to be a 'toxic dose'.
Drug testing then confirmed he had not taken any other substances, including cocaine, cannabis, speed or powerful sleeping drugs.
Doctors at the hospital, which hasn't been identified, contacted the local poison control centre for advice on treating nutmeg overdose cases.
The teenager was given intravenous fluids and oxygen to support him, but there is currently no antidote for a nutmeg overdose.
His symptoms cleared after 24 hours. Both he and his family were counselled on the dangers of toxic substances, including nutmeg.
Although there have only been two nutmeg-related deaths, Professor Beckerman has warned that the household spice is extremely potent even in small doses.
Just a few spoonfuls can be fatal. This is because nutmeg contains an oil compound which is a mixture of myristicin, elemicin, eugenol and safrole which trigger the overdose.
Myristicin is particularly potent as it breaks down into MMDA, a psychedelic substance similar to the recreational MDMA drug.
While it is believed to have benefits as an aphrodisiac and an antioxidant, nutmeg has also been linked to psychiatric illness such as depression and physical problems such as nausea, double-vision and hypothermia.
Hallucinations can also be caused from overdoses, as can other neurological effects such as anxiety and slurred speech.
The effects of consuming an overdose of nutmeg are visible within between half an hour to eight hours of ingestion.
Professor Beckerman wrote: 'Clinicians believe that since the side effects of nutmeg can be so discomforting, patients rarely abuse the spice a second time.
'Therefore, the potential for recurrent use is expected to be minimal.'
However, because it does nutmeg does not show up in drugs screenings it is particularly hard to identify and may result in misdiagnosis.
And even if nutmeg poisoning is pinpointed, there are no current cures and only relaxing treatments of benzodiazepines are available.
By Jack Elsom
Daily Nail
October 11, 2019
A teenager was scrambled to hospital in a trance-like state after overdosing on the popular spice nutmeg.
Paramedics found the 17-year-old pacing and muttering under his breath, unable to answer the most 'simple' of questions, vomiting and making involuntary muscle movements.
Initially baffled by the mysterious symptoms, doctors later discovered the boy had snorted a tablespoon of nutmeg - which does not show up in drug screenings.
The unnamed boy, who is thought to be from New York, survived his overdose, to which there is currently no antidote.
But now medics are using his unusual case to highlight the harmful effects of the common festive spice often added to lattes.
Because unbeknownst to most people who sprinkle the ingredient on their food and drink, nutmeg contains an oil which breaks down into MMDA - a psychedelic drug similar to the recreational MDMA.
Lead author Professor Bernard Beckerman of the City University of New York told the story of the unnamed teenager in the Complementary Therapies in Medicine journal.
On a Friday night, emergency service crews were scrambled to his parents' home after receiving reports of a 'disoriented male'.
They arrived to find him pacing the living room while talking to himself in a clear state of unrest.
The paramedics began asking him some routine questions - the boy gazed at them with big dilated pupils and was incapable of responding coherently.
The crew tried to apply an oxygen mask, but the restless unnamed boy took it off before suddenly walking away, seemingly involuntarily, and throwing up.
The teenager was then stretchered into an ambulance and whisked to hospital for treatment.
His parents – who said they last saw him earlier on in the afternoon in a 'normal state of health' – revealed he wasn't taking any medications.
They also told doctors that they weren't aware of him ever using any illicit drugs, according to the case report.
But, suspecting an overdose, the medics asked to rummage through the boy's room and found a cannabis-filled cigarette stashed away in a desk drawer along with a half-empty bottle of ground nutmeg.
Both items were taken with them to the hospital and turned over to the emergency department medical staff.
In hospital, the teenager admitted to snorting 'at least' one tablespoon of nutmeg – an amount considered to be a 'toxic dose'.
Drug testing then confirmed he had not taken any other substances, including cocaine, cannabis, speed or powerful sleeping drugs.
Doctors at the hospital, which hasn't been identified, contacted the local poison control centre for advice on treating nutmeg overdose cases.
The teenager was given intravenous fluids and oxygen to support him, but there is currently no antidote for a nutmeg overdose.
His symptoms cleared after 24 hours. Both he and his family were counselled on the dangers of toxic substances, including nutmeg.
Although there have only been two nutmeg-related deaths, Professor Beckerman has warned that the household spice is extremely potent even in small doses.
Just a few spoonfuls can be fatal. This is because nutmeg contains an oil compound which is a mixture of myristicin, elemicin, eugenol and safrole which trigger the overdose.
Myristicin is particularly potent as it breaks down into MMDA, a psychedelic substance similar to the recreational MDMA drug.
While it is believed to have benefits as an aphrodisiac and an antioxidant, nutmeg has also been linked to psychiatric illness such as depression and physical problems such as nausea, double-vision and hypothermia.
Hallucinations can also be caused from overdoses, as can other neurological effects such as anxiety and slurred speech.
The effects of consuming an overdose of nutmeg are visible within between half an hour to eight hours of ingestion.
Professor Beckerman wrote: 'Clinicians believe that since the side effects of nutmeg can be so discomforting, patients rarely abuse the spice a second time.
'Therefore, the potential for recurrent use is expected to be minimal.'
However, because it does nutmeg does not show up in drugs screenings it is particularly hard to identify and may result in misdiagnosis.
And even if nutmeg poisoning is pinpointed, there are no current cures and only relaxing treatments of benzodiazepines are available.
Friday, October 11, 2019
TRUMP SHOWS HIMELF TO BE MORE THAN A JERK … AN IDIOTIC JERK
Trump defends his Syria move, says Kurds ‘didn’t help us with Normandy’
By Bob Fredericks
New York Post
October 9, 2019
President Trump on Wednesday defended his decision to pull US troops out of northeast Syria, saying he was tired of “forever wars” and of having to meet grieving parents of slain service members.
Asked about his decision, which left America’s Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS to defend themselves from a Turkish military incursion without backup, Trump criticized the Kurds after earlier calling Turkey’s move “a bad idea.”
“They didn’t help us in the Second World War, they didn’t help us with Normandy,” he said, saying they only fight for “their land” at a White House event in which he signed a government transparency bill.
“With all of that being said, we like the Kurds,” he added.
Asked whether his decision to leave the Kurds to their own defense would harm America’s ability to form and maintain alliances, Trump dismissed the idea.
“Alliances are very easy,” he said.
He also responded to criticism from his usually reliable ally, Lindsey Graham, who along with other Republicans have ripped Trump for the move, calling him a war hawk.
“Lindsey [Graham] and I feel differently. I think Lindsey would like to stay there for the next 200 years and maybe add a couple of hundred thousand people every place,” the commander in chief said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is just another reason why I will not vote for a president in 2020. And it looks like Trump is no longer of sound mind.
By Bob Fredericks
New York Post
October 9, 2019
President Trump on Wednesday defended his decision to pull US troops out of northeast Syria, saying he was tired of “forever wars” and of having to meet grieving parents of slain service members.
Asked about his decision, which left America’s Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS to defend themselves from a Turkish military incursion without backup, Trump criticized the Kurds after earlier calling Turkey’s move “a bad idea.”
“They didn’t help us in the Second World War, they didn’t help us with Normandy,” he said, saying they only fight for “their land” at a White House event in which he signed a government transparency bill.
“With all of that being said, we like the Kurds,” he added.
Asked whether his decision to leave the Kurds to their own defense would harm America’s ability to form and maintain alliances, Trump dismissed the idea.
“Alliances are very easy,” he said.
He also responded to criticism from his usually reliable ally, Lindsey Graham, who along with other Republicans have ripped Trump for the move, calling him a war hawk.
“Lindsey [Graham] and I feel differently. I think Lindsey would like to stay there for the next 200 years and maybe add a couple of hundred thousand people every place,” the commander in chief said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is just another reason why I will not vote for a president in 2020. And it looks like Trump is no longer of sound mind.
IT WOULD BE GREAT IF GIULIANI’S ALLEGATIONS ARE TRUE ….. BUT THEY ARE PROBABLY JUST MORE OF HIS BULLSHIT
Giuliani 'has evidence' that Joe Biden received $900k in lobbying fees from son Hunter's Ukrainian gas company Burisma - AND claims father-son duo sold influence in China and Romania
By Keith Griffith
Daily Mail
October 10, 2019
Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney of President Donald Trump, has claimed that Ukrainian gas company Burisma paid Joe Biden $900,000 in lobbying fees, citing documents released by a Ukrainian member of parliament.
'Biden, his son and his brother had a 30-year-long scam to make money, millions, selling his public office,' Giuliani said in an interview on Wednesday night with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
'Senator first, vice president second. Ukraine, just the tip of the iceberg,' Giuliani continued.
Giuliani cited new allegations raised at a Wednesday press conference in Kyiv by Ukrainian MP Andriy Derkach, who claimed he had investigative documents showing that Burisma paid Biden nearly a million dollars in lobbying fees.
Biden's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com late on Wednesday.
The Trump campaign has alleged that Biden quashed a Ukrainian investigation into Burisma, where Biden's son Hunter served on the board from 2014 until earlier this year, using the threat of withholding U.S. foreign aid.
Biden has denied any wrongdoing, and Trump's phone call to the Ukrainian president asking him to look into the matter is at the heart of House Democrats' mounting impeachment probe into Trump.
At the press conference, Derkach made public the documents he received from investigative journalists, including correspondence between officers of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and representatives of diplomatic missions of foreign states,
Derkach said the documents offered evidence of fees that Burisma paid Biden through an intermediary. The documents could not be immediately translated or verified by DailyMail.com.
'This was the transfer of Burisma Group's funds for lobbying activities, as investigators believe, personally to Joe Biden through a lobbying company,' Derkach said, according to a translation from Russian news service Interfax.
'Funds in the amount of $900,000 were transferred to the U.S.-based company Rosemont Seneca Partners, which according to open sources, in particular, the New York Times, is affiliated with Biden. The payment reference was payment for consultative services,' Derkach said.
Derkach insisted that, while serving as vice president, Biden used his influence to squash an investigation into Burisma, where Biden was reportedly making as much as $50,000 a month serving on the corporate board.
'Using political and economic levelers of influencing Ukrainian authorities and manipulating the issue of providing financial aid to Ukraine, Joe Biden actively assisted closing criminal cases into the activity of former Ukrainian Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky, who is the founder and owner of Burisma Group,' he said.
Derkach called for the U.S. Justice Department to independently investigate his allegations and the documents he released.
Giuliani insisted that Derkach's press conference gives weight to his own claims about Biden, which Giuliani has been energetically promoting in cable news interviews.
'This case stinks. They can run away from it all they want,' Giuliani said, hinting vaguely that Biden could be tied to influence peddling in other countries as well.
'I want you to keep you eye not just on China, I want you to keep your eye on Romania. Just watch Romania,' he said.
According to reports in Romanian media, Hunter Biden had business dealings in that country.
Hunter Biden was involved in real estate business in Bucharest and allegedly tried to lobby in favor of local real estate tycoon Gabriel Popoviciu before he was sentenced to jail in a high-profile corruption case in 2017, sources close to Popoviciu told local G4Media.ro.
In his interview, Giuliani said that the media is refusing to consider evidence of potential wrongdoing by Biden's family, that the impeachment inquiry against Trump is unfair.
He said that the notorious Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s were a fairer process than the Trump impeachment inquiry.
Giuliani called the inquiry a 'process without any due process' and pointed to the media as alleged 'enablers' of the Democrats' plans.
'I never wanted in my life to appear at a Salem Witch Trial, which would actually be fairer than this,' Giuliani added.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I seriously doubt that Giuliani has the evidence he claims he’s got. But if he does, it would be enough to put both Joe and Hunter Biden in jail.
By Keith Griffith
Daily Mail
October 10, 2019
Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney of President Donald Trump, has claimed that Ukrainian gas company Burisma paid Joe Biden $900,000 in lobbying fees, citing documents released by a Ukrainian member of parliament.
'Biden, his son and his brother had a 30-year-long scam to make money, millions, selling his public office,' Giuliani said in an interview on Wednesday night with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
'Senator first, vice president second. Ukraine, just the tip of the iceberg,' Giuliani continued.
Giuliani cited new allegations raised at a Wednesday press conference in Kyiv by Ukrainian MP Andriy Derkach, who claimed he had investigative documents showing that Burisma paid Biden nearly a million dollars in lobbying fees.
Biden's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com late on Wednesday.
The Trump campaign has alleged that Biden quashed a Ukrainian investigation into Burisma, where Biden's son Hunter served on the board from 2014 until earlier this year, using the threat of withholding U.S. foreign aid.
Biden has denied any wrongdoing, and Trump's phone call to the Ukrainian president asking him to look into the matter is at the heart of House Democrats' mounting impeachment probe into Trump.
At the press conference, Derkach made public the documents he received from investigative journalists, including correspondence between officers of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and representatives of diplomatic missions of foreign states,
Derkach said the documents offered evidence of fees that Burisma paid Biden through an intermediary. The documents could not be immediately translated or verified by DailyMail.com.
'This was the transfer of Burisma Group's funds for lobbying activities, as investigators believe, personally to Joe Biden through a lobbying company,' Derkach said, according to a translation from Russian news service Interfax.
'Funds in the amount of $900,000 were transferred to the U.S.-based company Rosemont Seneca Partners, which according to open sources, in particular, the New York Times, is affiliated with Biden. The payment reference was payment for consultative services,' Derkach said.
Derkach insisted that, while serving as vice president, Biden used his influence to squash an investigation into Burisma, where Biden was reportedly making as much as $50,000 a month serving on the corporate board.
'Using political and economic levelers of influencing Ukrainian authorities and manipulating the issue of providing financial aid to Ukraine, Joe Biden actively assisted closing criminal cases into the activity of former Ukrainian Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky, who is the founder and owner of Burisma Group,' he said.
Derkach called for the U.S. Justice Department to independently investigate his allegations and the documents he released.
Giuliani insisted that Derkach's press conference gives weight to his own claims about Biden, which Giuliani has been energetically promoting in cable news interviews.
'This case stinks. They can run away from it all they want,' Giuliani said, hinting vaguely that Biden could be tied to influence peddling in other countries as well.
'I want you to keep you eye not just on China, I want you to keep your eye on Romania. Just watch Romania,' he said.
According to reports in Romanian media, Hunter Biden had business dealings in that country.
Hunter Biden was involved in real estate business in Bucharest and allegedly tried to lobby in favor of local real estate tycoon Gabriel Popoviciu before he was sentenced to jail in a high-profile corruption case in 2017, sources close to Popoviciu told local G4Media.ro.
In his interview, Giuliani said that the media is refusing to consider evidence of potential wrongdoing by Biden's family, that the impeachment inquiry against Trump is unfair.
He said that the notorious Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s were a fairer process than the Trump impeachment inquiry.
Giuliani called the inquiry a 'process without any due process' and pointed to the media as alleged 'enablers' of the Democrats' plans.
'I never wanted in my life to appear at a Salem Witch Trial, which would actually be fairer than this,' Giuliani added.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I seriously doubt that Giuliani has the evidence he claims he’s got. But if he does, it would be enough to put both Joe and Hunter Biden in jail.
VAPERS ARE SMOKERS
by Bob Walsh
Prudential Insurance announced yesterday that, as far as they are concerned for insurance purposes, Vapers are the same as smokers and will be considered as such for insurance rating.
Just thought you would like to know.
Prudential Insurance announced yesterday that, as far as they are concerned for insurance purposes, Vapers are the same as smokers and will be considered as such for insurance rating.
Just thought you would like to know.
FREEZING IN THE DARK
by Bob Walsh
As I write this (Thursday morning) about 2 million denizens of the formerly great state of California in about 700,000 households have no power due to PG&E cutting off the power to prevent possible wild fires started by their equipment. Since they have to visually inspect the high power lines prior to re-energizing them some of these people will be without power for a week. People are, for the most part, severely pissed off.
No power means for the most part no cash registers, no credit card machines, no gas pumps, no well pumps, no schools and no traffic lights. Plus fires started by people using generators who are maybe not thinking clearly about where they are placing them or how to refuel them.
There is at least one report of someone firing on a PG&E truck. Several PG&E offices had barriers installed in front of their buildings and guards in place to protect the employees, who are catching a lot of grief over the situation.
As I write this (Thursday morning) about 2 million denizens of the formerly great state of California in about 700,000 households have no power due to PG&E cutting off the power to prevent possible wild fires started by their equipment. Since they have to visually inspect the high power lines prior to re-energizing them some of these people will be without power for a week. People are, for the most part, severely pissed off.
No power means for the most part no cash registers, no credit card machines, no gas pumps, no well pumps, no schools and no traffic lights. Plus fires started by people using generators who are maybe not thinking clearly about where they are placing them or how to refuel them.
There is at least one report of someone firing on a PG&E truck. Several PG&E offices had barriers installed in front of their buildings and guards in place to protect the employees, who are catching a lot of grief over the situation.
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
In 1862 the Confederate congress passed a law exempting persons who own a minimum of 20 slaves from mandatory military service (conscription).
In 1906 the San Francisco school district segregated schools to separate oriental children from white children.
In 1950 the FCC approved the application of the Columbia Broadcasting System to begin color TV broadcasts.
In 1972 a race riot broke out on the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk on station off the coast of Vietnam.
In 1906 the San Francisco school district segregated schools to separate oriental children from white children.
In 1950 the FCC approved the application of the Columbia Broadcasting System to begin color TV broadcasts.
In 1972 a race riot broke out on the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk on station off the coast of Vietnam.
CA MOVES TO MAKE VOTER FRAUD EASIER
by Bob Walsh
Governor Newsom has just signed into law a "same day" voter registration plan that allows people to show up to any polling place on voting day, register to vote and cast a ballot.
I don't see how anything bad could ever happen with that.
Theoretically this is intended to make it easier for the estimated six million eligible but unregistered voters to vote. Personally, if you are such a slug you have not bothered to register until election day I don't freaking WANT you to vote. It will, however, make it much easier for convicted felons, illegal aliens and other undocumented democrats to vote.
Governor Newsom has just signed into law a "same day" voter registration plan that allows people to show up to any polling place on voting day, register to vote and cast a ballot.
I don't see how anything bad could ever happen with that.
Theoretically this is intended to make it easier for the estimated six million eligible but unregistered voters to vote. Personally, if you are such a slug you have not bothered to register until election day I don't freaking WANT you to vote. It will, however, make it much easier for convicted felons, illegal aliens and other undocumented democrats to vote.
THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO
The city made a choice to tolerate vagrancy and encourage drug use, with dire consequences
By Heather Mac Donald
Manhattan Institute
October 3, 2019
SAN FRANCISCO -- This city has been conducting a three-decade experiment in what happens when society stops enforcing bourgeois norms of behavior. It has done so in the name of compassion for the homeless. The result: Street squalor and misery have increased, while government expenditures have ballooned. Yet the principles guiding city policy remain inviolate: Homelessness is a housing problem, it is involuntary, and it persists because of inadequate public spending. These propositions are readily disproved by talking to people living on the streets.
“Everyone’s on drugs here . . . and stealing,” an ex-convict named Shaku explains from an encampment of tents, trash and bicycles across from Glide Memorial Church in the heart of the Tenderloin district. A formerly homeless woman living in a city-subsidized hotel, asked if she does drugs, replies: “Is that a trick question?” Jeff, 50, slumps over his coffee cup at 7:30 a.m. A half-eaten muffin sits next to him on a filthy blanket. “I use drugs, alcohol, all of it,” he tells me, his eyes closed. “The whole Tenderloin is for drugs.”
The city sends the message relentlessly that drug use is not only acceptable but expected. The Health Department distributes 4.5 million syringes a year, along with alcohol swabs, vitamin C to dissolve heroin and crack, and instructions on how to tie one’s arm for a hit. Officials have installed 17 needle-disposal boxes and kiosks throughout the city, signaling to children that drug use is a normal part of adult life.
Only 60% of the city’s free needles are returned; the rest end up on the sidewalks or in the sewers. Users dig for veins in plain view. At the corner of Hyde Street and Golden Gate Avenue, steps away from the UC Hastings College of the Law, I was easily able to purchase a 2-gram pellet of fentanyl for $16, a new-customer discount.
Public drug use has grown worse since the approval in 2014 of Proposition 47, the state ballot initiative that downgraded a host of drug and property crimes to misdemeanors. Local prosecutors and judges, already worried about contributing to “mass incarceration,” are loath to initiate misdemeanor drug cases. San Francisco police officers complain that even dealers get neither jail time nor probation. Drug courts have closed in some California cities, the Washington Post reports, because police have lost the threat of prison time to induce addicted dealers to begin treatment. The number of clients in San Francisco drug court dropped to 185 in 2018 from 296 in 2014, a decline of more than 37%.
The city also enables the entire homeless lifestyle. Outreach workers hand out beef jerky, crackers and other snacks. The city’s biannual homeless survey claims that “food insecurity” is a pressing problem, but the homeless don’t act like food-deprived people. Waste litters the sidewalks and gutters. A typical deposit outside a Market Street office building includes an unopened 1-pound bag of walnuts, a box of uneaten pastries, an empty brandy bottle, a huge black lace bra, a dirty yellow teddy bear, a high-heeled red suede boot and a brown suede jacket.
Free services and food—along with maximal tolerance for antisocial behavior—act as magnets. “San Francisco is the place to go if you live on the streets,” Jeff says. “There are more resources—showers, yeah, and housing.” A man standing outside the city’s latest shelter design, known as a Navigation Center, says that he was offered housing four times but always turned it down. Navigation Centers are designed to be maximally accommodating. Residents come and go as they please, order meals at any time of the day, and bring their pets, partners and possessions (known in shelter parlance as “the three Ps”).
Elevating the rights of the homeless over those of the working public has cost taxpayers billions, with nothing to show for it. The “unsheltered” count continues to rise—up 17%, to 8,011, in 2019 from 2017—and San Francisco continues to wonder why. Is it lack of city-created affordable housing, as advocates and politicians maintain? No other American city has built as many units of affordable housing per capita, according to the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. From 2004-14, the city spent $2 billion on nearly 3,000 new units of permanent supportive housing, which comes with drug counseling and social workers. More have been constructed since, and thousands of shelter beds and apartment units are in the works.
No one has a right to live in the most expensive real-estate market in the country, certainly not on the public’s dime. It isn’t clear why any city is morally obligated to provide housing to someone who starts living on its streets. But assuming such an obligation, the money that San Francisco spends trying to house the homeless locally could go much further outside its boundaries; the millions saved could go to mental-health and addiction services.
Clean and sober campuses, serving an entire region, could be built on abandoned or undeveloped land in industrial zones and rural areas. Cities and counties should pool resources for these facilities, since the vagrancy problem is fluid—people move from one place to another. The bare-bones campuses must be immaculately maintained, safe and disciplined, so residents learn habits of self-control. Everyone should work.
The stories the homeless tell about their lives reveal that something far more complex than a housing shortage is at work. The tales veer from one confused and improbable situation to the next, against a backdrop of drug use, petty crime and chaotic child rearing. There are few policy levers to change this crisis of meaning in American culture. What is certain is that the continuing crusade to normalize drug use, along with the absence of any public encouragement of temperance, will further handicap this unmoored population.
Carving out a zone of immunity from the law and bourgeois norms for a perceived victim class destroys the quality of life in a city. As important, that immunity consigns its alleged beneficiaries to lives of self-abasement and marginality. Tolerating street vagrancy is a choice that cities make. For the public good, in San Francisco and elsewhere, that choice should be unmade.
EDITOR’S NOTE: A more appropriate title would have been ‘The Sins of San Francisco’ or ‘The Stupidity That Is San Francisco.’
By Heather Mac Donald
Manhattan Institute
October 3, 2019
SAN FRANCISCO -- This city has been conducting a three-decade experiment in what happens when society stops enforcing bourgeois norms of behavior. It has done so in the name of compassion for the homeless. The result: Street squalor and misery have increased, while government expenditures have ballooned. Yet the principles guiding city policy remain inviolate: Homelessness is a housing problem, it is involuntary, and it persists because of inadequate public spending. These propositions are readily disproved by talking to people living on the streets.
“Everyone’s on drugs here . . . and stealing,” an ex-convict named Shaku explains from an encampment of tents, trash and bicycles across from Glide Memorial Church in the heart of the Tenderloin district. A formerly homeless woman living in a city-subsidized hotel, asked if she does drugs, replies: “Is that a trick question?” Jeff, 50, slumps over his coffee cup at 7:30 a.m. A half-eaten muffin sits next to him on a filthy blanket. “I use drugs, alcohol, all of it,” he tells me, his eyes closed. “The whole Tenderloin is for drugs.”
The city sends the message relentlessly that drug use is not only acceptable but expected. The Health Department distributes 4.5 million syringes a year, along with alcohol swabs, vitamin C to dissolve heroin and crack, and instructions on how to tie one’s arm for a hit. Officials have installed 17 needle-disposal boxes and kiosks throughout the city, signaling to children that drug use is a normal part of adult life.
Only 60% of the city’s free needles are returned; the rest end up on the sidewalks or in the sewers. Users dig for veins in plain view. At the corner of Hyde Street and Golden Gate Avenue, steps away from the UC Hastings College of the Law, I was easily able to purchase a 2-gram pellet of fentanyl for $16, a new-customer discount.
Public drug use has grown worse since the approval in 2014 of Proposition 47, the state ballot initiative that downgraded a host of drug and property crimes to misdemeanors. Local prosecutors and judges, already worried about contributing to “mass incarceration,” are loath to initiate misdemeanor drug cases. San Francisco police officers complain that even dealers get neither jail time nor probation. Drug courts have closed in some California cities, the Washington Post reports, because police have lost the threat of prison time to induce addicted dealers to begin treatment. The number of clients in San Francisco drug court dropped to 185 in 2018 from 296 in 2014, a decline of more than 37%.
The city also enables the entire homeless lifestyle. Outreach workers hand out beef jerky, crackers and other snacks. The city’s biannual homeless survey claims that “food insecurity” is a pressing problem, but the homeless don’t act like food-deprived people. Waste litters the sidewalks and gutters. A typical deposit outside a Market Street office building includes an unopened 1-pound bag of walnuts, a box of uneaten pastries, an empty brandy bottle, a huge black lace bra, a dirty yellow teddy bear, a high-heeled red suede boot and a brown suede jacket.
Free services and food—along with maximal tolerance for antisocial behavior—act as magnets. “San Francisco is the place to go if you live on the streets,” Jeff says. “There are more resources—showers, yeah, and housing.” A man standing outside the city’s latest shelter design, known as a Navigation Center, says that he was offered housing four times but always turned it down. Navigation Centers are designed to be maximally accommodating. Residents come and go as they please, order meals at any time of the day, and bring their pets, partners and possessions (known in shelter parlance as “the three Ps”).
Elevating the rights of the homeless over those of the working public has cost taxpayers billions, with nothing to show for it. The “unsheltered” count continues to rise—up 17%, to 8,011, in 2019 from 2017—and San Francisco continues to wonder why. Is it lack of city-created affordable housing, as advocates and politicians maintain? No other American city has built as many units of affordable housing per capita, according to the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. From 2004-14, the city spent $2 billion on nearly 3,000 new units of permanent supportive housing, which comes with drug counseling and social workers. More have been constructed since, and thousands of shelter beds and apartment units are in the works.
No one has a right to live in the most expensive real-estate market in the country, certainly not on the public’s dime. It isn’t clear why any city is morally obligated to provide housing to someone who starts living on its streets. But assuming such an obligation, the money that San Francisco spends trying to house the homeless locally could go much further outside its boundaries; the millions saved could go to mental-health and addiction services.
Clean and sober campuses, serving an entire region, could be built on abandoned or undeveloped land in industrial zones and rural areas. Cities and counties should pool resources for these facilities, since the vagrancy problem is fluid—people move from one place to another. The bare-bones campuses must be immaculately maintained, safe and disciplined, so residents learn habits of self-control. Everyone should work.
The stories the homeless tell about their lives reveal that something far more complex than a housing shortage is at work. The tales veer from one confused and improbable situation to the next, against a backdrop of drug use, petty crime and chaotic child rearing. There are few policy levers to change this crisis of meaning in American culture. What is certain is that the continuing crusade to normalize drug use, along with the absence of any public encouragement of temperance, will further handicap this unmoored population.
Carving out a zone of immunity from the law and bourgeois norms for a perceived victim class destroys the quality of life in a city. As important, that immunity consigns its alleged beneficiaries to lives of self-abasement and marginality. Tolerating street vagrancy is a choice that cities make. For the public good, in San Francisco and elsewhere, that choice should be unmade.
EDITOR’S NOTE: A more appropriate title would have been ‘The Sins of San Francisco’ or ‘The Stupidity That Is San Francisco.’
A YOM KIPPUR WAR AGAINST GERMAN SYNAGOGUE
Wounded Yom Kippur shooter is taken to court still showing signs of injuries he suffered in battle with police as German prosecutor says he intended to carry out a 'massacre'
Daily Mail
October 10, 2019
Yom Kippur shooter Stephan Balliet showed signs of injury as he was escorted from a helicopter ahead of a court appearance on Thursday.
Germany's top prosecutor Peter Frank said the Yom Kippur shooter had intended to carry out a synagogue massacre and described the shooting as an act of 'terror' on Tuesday. 'What we experienced yesterday was terror,' he said.
'The suspect, Stephan Balliet, aimed to carry out a massacre in the synagogue in Halle.' Balliet, 27 - identified as the German Yom Kippur shooter after live-streaming the attack - has been revealed as a loner who lived with his mother and spent hours on his computer.
He was not a known extremist, according to local media, and appears to have self-radicalised online.
A manifesto posted to the internet a week ago specifically mentions attacking the synagogue in Halle which was targeted on Wednesday, talks about killing 'anti-whites' including Jews, and contains images of home-made weapons and ammunition used in the attack.
The new details emerged as Jewish community leaders hit out at German authorities for failing to do more to combat rising anti-Semitism, while also asking for more protection for Jewish sites.
Two people were shot dead during the attack Wednesday, before police arrested the suspected gunman after a shoot-out that left him wounded.
Around 50 terrified men, women and children - including 10 Americans - were trapped inside the German synagogue in Halle during a neo-Nazi attack. They watched him try and get in on CCTV.
Daily Mail
October 10, 2019
Yom Kippur shooter Stephan Balliet showed signs of injury as he was escorted from a helicopter ahead of a court appearance on Thursday.
Germany's top prosecutor Peter Frank said the Yom Kippur shooter had intended to carry out a synagogue massacre and described the shooting as an act of 'terror' on Tuesday. 'What we experienced yesterday was terror,' he said.
'The suspect, Stephan Balliet, aimed to carry out a massacre in the synagogue in Halle.' Balliet, 27 - identified as the German Yom Kippur shooter after live-streaming the attack - has been revealed as a loner who lived with his mother and spent hours on his computer.
He was not a known extremist, according to local media, and appears to have self-radicalised online.
A manifesto posted to the internet a week ago specifically mentions attacking the synagogue in Halle which was targeted on Wednesday, talks about killing 'anti-whites' including Jews, and contains images of home-made weapons and ammunition used in the attack.
The new details emerged as Jewish community leaders hit out at German authorities for failing to do more to combat rising anti-Semitism, while also asking for more protection for Jewish sites.
Two people were shot dead during the attack Wednesday, before police arrested the suspected gunman after a shoot-out that left him wounded.
Around 50 terrified men, women and children - including 10 Americans - were trapped inside the German synagogue in Halle during a neo-Nazi attack. They watched him try and get in on CCTV.
COP HAD HISTORY OF CRAZINESS BEFORE BEING HIRED AND ANOTHER COP PAID THE PRICE
St. Louis cop who fatally shot Katlyn Alix had played Russian roulette with previous girlfriends, lawsuit alleges
By Kim Bell
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
October 10, 2019
ST. LOUIS — The mother of St. Louis police Officer Katlyn Alix claims in a lawsuit that the fellow officer charged with killing Alix had a “complicated psychiatric history,” including forcing other girlfriends to play Russian roulette, and that the city should have known it before hiring him.
Alix, 24, was shot to death Jan. 24 while off-duty and at the home of an on-duty officer, Nathaniel Hendren.
Alix’s mother, Aimee L. Wahlers, filed a wrongful-death suit Wednesday in St. Louis Circuit Court against Hendren, Patrick Riordan, Gary Foster and the city of St. Louis. Riordan was Hendren’s partner on duty that night; he has not been charged with a crime. Foster was their sergeant.
Hendren is charged with involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action. He is accused in the shooting of Alix while they were playing a Russian-roulettelike game at Hendren’s home in the 700 block of Dover Place in the Carondelet neighborhood.
Among the claims made in Wahlers’ lawsuit:
• Neighbors heard a “screaming fight” and a man and woman yelling before the shooting.
• Hendren forced other girlfriends to play Russian roulette and engage in other sexual activity that involved firearms.
• Prior to being hired by St. Louis as a police officer, Hendren had a “complicated psychiatric history” that included anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and “suicidal ideations and gestures.”
• Hendren, who has a military background, had, on occasion, put a loaded gun to his mouth and his head “when alone, just to feel something.”
Talmage Newton IV, a lawyer for Hendren in the criminal case, has said the death of Alix was a “tragic accident.” Newton on Thursday said he just got a copy of the lawsuit and is still reviewing it. But a cursory review, Newton said, found “all sorts of inaccuracies and misstatements,” he said. “It’s not precise.” He did not elaborate about what was inaccurate.
Asked about the specific allegation that Hendren forced previous girlfriends to play Russian roulette in the past, Newton said: “I have no information on that.”
Wahlers is from Moscow Mills. She referred questions to her lawyer, John M. Simon, who is handling the case along with Clayton attorney Scott Rosenblum. Simon was not available for comment. Rosenblum would only say that he looked forward to working with lawyers Simon and his son, Cole Rosenblum, and “getting this case to trial.”
St. Louis police Chief John Hayden declined to comment on the lawsuit because it’s pending litigation, he said. He also declined to say if the department had had any concerns about Hendren’s behavior before the incident. A police department spokesman, Sgt. Keith Barrett, said that, in general, the department has all applicants go through a psychiatric evaluation before being hired.
Alix’s family doesn’t know the full extent of Hendren’s psychiatric history because the police department has refused to turn over his disciplinary or employment files. City Counselor Julian Bush said he has not read the lawsuit and declined comment.
The 46-page lawsuit gives a detailed account of what it claims led up to Alix’s shooting. It describes behavior of Hendren and Riordan, including drinking while on duty, being outside of their patrol zone, and skipping a burglary call — allegations previously reported by the Post-Dispatch.
Alix met Hendren and Riordan at Hendren’s home while the two men were supposed to be working, and Hendren and Riordan consumed alcohol and other “unknown substances,” the suit says. “Officer Alix, who was off duty, was intoxicated and vulnerable,” the suit says.
After the screaming heard by neighbors, Hendren pulled out his personal revolver and reportedly fired empty shots down a hallway, then put a single bullet into the gun and pointed it at Alix’s chest, the suit says. He fired the gun and the shot killed Alix, the suit says, claiming that Riordan saw it happen and failed to intervene.
As Riordan ran outside to start his patrol car, Hendren carried Alix outside, apparently dropping her multiple times and struggling to get her into the back seat of the patrol car, the lawsuit says. When they arrived at the hospital, the suit says, Alix was “for an unknown reason” naked from the hips up; her sports bra was pulled over her head.
The officers dragged “her lifeless body” into the emergency room at 1:22 a.m. on Jan. 24, the suit says. Outside the hospital, Hendren, a minute later, is seen slamming his head through the back windshield of Sgt. Foster’s police SUV. The suit also is critical that tests to determine Hendren’s blood alcohol level weren’t taken for more than 2½ hours.
In the play-by-play of the evening, the lawsuit does not talk about Alix handling weapons. However, in a probable cause statement when criminal charges were filed in January against Hendren, authorities said Hendren and Alix had taken turns pointing the gun and pulling the trigger.
By Kim Bell
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
October 10, 2019
ST. LOUIS — The mother of St. Louis police Officer Katlyn Alix claims in a lawsuit that the fellow officer charged with killing Alix had a “complicated psychiatric history,” including forcing other girlfriends to play Russian roulette, and that the city should have known it before hiring him.
Alix, 24, was shot to death Jan. 24 while off-duty and at the home of an on-duty officer, Nathaniel Hendren.
Alix’s mother, Aimee L. Wahlers, filed a wrongful-death suit Wednesday in St. Louis Circuit Court against Hendren, Patrick Riordan, Gary Foster and the city of St. Louis. Riordan was Hendren’s partner on duty that night; he has not been charged with a crime. Foster was their sergeant.
Hendren is charged with involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action. He is accused in the shooting of Alix while they were playing a Russian-roulettelike game at Hendren’s home in the 700 block of Dover Place in the Carondelet neighborhood.
Among the claims made in Wahlers’ lawsuit:
• Neighbors heard a “screaming fight” and a man and woman yelling before the shooting.
• Hendren forced other girlfriends to play Russian roulette and engage in other sexual activity that involved firearms.
• Prior to being hired by St. Louis as a police officer, Hendren had a “complicated psychiatric history” that included anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and “suicidal ideations and gestures.”
• Hendren, who has a military background, had, on occasion, put a loaded gun to his mouth and his head “when alone, just to feel something.”
Talmage Newton IV, a lawyer for Hendren in the criminal case, has said the death of Alix was a “tragic accident.” Newton on Thursday said he just got a copy of the lawsuit and is still reviewing it. But a cursory review, Newton said, found “all sorts of inaccuracies and misstatements,” he said. “It’s not precise.” He did not elaborate about what was inaccurate.
Asked about the specific allegation that Hendren forced previous girlfriends to play Russian roulette in the past, Newton said: “I have no information on that.”
Wahlers is from Moscow Mills. She referred questions to her lawyer, John M. Simon, who is handling the case along with Clayton attorney Scott Rosenblum. Simon was not available for comment. Rosenblum would only say that he looked forward to working with lawyers Simon and his son, Cole Rosenblum, and “getting this case to trial.”
St. Louis police Chief John Hayden declined to comment on the lawsuit because it’s pending litigation, he said. He also declined to say if the department had had any concerns about Hendren’s behavior before the incident. A police department spokesman, Sgt. Keith Barrett, said that, in general, the department has all applicants go through a psychiatric evaluation before being hired.
Alix’s family doesn’t know the full extent of Hendren’s psychiatric history because the police department has refused to turn over his disciplinary or employment files. City Counselor Julian Bush said he has not read the lawsuit and declined comment.
The 46-page lawsuit gives a detailed account of what it claims led up to Alix’s shooting. It describes behavior of Hendren and Riordan, including drinking while on duty, being outside of their patrol zone, and skipping a burglary call — allegations previously reported by the Post-Dispatch.
Alix met Hendren and Riordan at Hendren’s home while the two men were supposed to be working, and Hendren and Riordan consumed alcohol and other “unknown substances,” the suit says. “Officer Alix, who was off duty, was intoxicated and vulnerable,” the suit says.
After the screaming heard by neighbors, Hendren pulled out his personal revolver and reportedly fired empty shots down a hallway, then put a single bullet into the gun and pointed it at Alix’s chest, the suit says. He fired the gun and the shot killed Alix, the suit says, claiming that Riordan saw it happen and failed to intervene.
As Riordan ran outside to start his patrol car, Hendren carried Alix outside, apparently dropping her multiple times and struggling to get her into the back seat of the patrol car, the lawsuit says. When they arrived at the hospital, the suit says, Alix was “for an unknown reason” naked from the hips up; her sports bra was pulled over her head.
The officers dragged “her lifeless body” into the emergency room at 1:22 a.m. on Jan. 24, the suit says. Outside the hospital, Hendren, a minute later, is seen slamming his head through the back windshield of Sgt. Foster’s police SUV. The suit also is critical that tests to determine Hendren’s blood alcohol level weren’t taken for more than 2½ hours.
In the play-by-play of the evening, the lawsuit does not talk about Alix handling weapons. However, in a probable cause statement when criminal charges were filed in January against Hendren, authorities said Hendren and Alix had taken turns pointing the gun and pulling the trigger.
VAG STASH OF METH AND $6,233 CASH ….. OR A PUSSY WORTH $6,000
Louisiana woman admits to owning the meth found in her vagina, where she had also hidden $6,000
By Brian Niemietz
New York Daily News
October 9, 2019
A Louisiana woman who’d initially denied owning the meth found in her vagina has struck a deal with prosecutors. She had already confessed to stealing at least some of the $6,233 that was hidden in the same body cavity.
Ashley Beth Rolland agreed to serve four months at the Ouachita Parish Correctional Center in northern Louisiana in exchange for a reduced drug possession charge, according to the Smoking Gun. Police came across the stash while searching for “approximately” $5,000 in cash the 24-year-old had reportedly stolen from a man she’d been staying with for a week in July.
Rolland never denied possession of the cash when police snatched her up shortly after midnight on July 31. But when a jailhouse search also turned up a plastic bag containing a gram of methamphetamine, she “denied ownership,” according to a police report posted online. Prosecutors charged her with both crimes last month on Friday the 13th.
The stolen cash charges were dropped as part of Rolland’s Oct. 3 plea deal.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I wonder if she got an orgasm by stuffing that money into her pussy?
By Brian Niemietz
New York Daily News
October 9, 2019
A Louisiana woman who’d initially denied owning the meth found in her vagina has struck a deal with prosecutors. She had already confessed to stealing at least some of the $6,233 that was hidden in the same body cavity.
Ashley Beth Rolland agreed to serve four months at the Ouachita Parish Correctional Center in northern Louisiana in exchange for a reduced drug possession charge, according to the Smoking Gun. Police came across the stash while searching for “approximately” $5,000 in cash the 24-year-old had reportedly stolen from a man she’d been staying with for a week in July.
Rolland never denied possession of the cash when police snatched her up shortly after midnight on July 31. But when a jailhouse search also turned up a plastic bag containing a gram of methamphetamine, she “denied ownership,” according to a police report posted online. Prosecutors charged her with both crimes last month on Friday the 13th.
The stolen cash charges were dropped as part of Rolland’s Oct. 3 plea deal.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I wonder if she got an orgasm by stuffing that money into her pussy?
MY LITTLE BOY IS A GOOD BOY, JUST NUTTY, AND NOT A MURDERER
Nine-year-old 'arsonist' charged with first-degree murder in mobile home fire that killed five relatives, including three toddlers, as mother insists he's NOT a monster and just made a mistake
Daily Mail
October 10, 2019
The mother of the nine-year-old boy from Illinois who has been charged with murder in connection to a deadly arson fire that killed most of his immediate family has spoken out for the first time, saying that the boy suffers from mental illness and is not a monster.
Katrina Alwood described her heartbreak Thursday, two days after her sole surviving child, Kyle Alwood was charged with five counts of first-degree murder, two counts of arson and one count of aggravated arson, after he allegedly intentionally set his family's mobile home ablaze in April.
The inferno near the village of Goodfield killed Kyle's stepfather, 34-year-old Jason Wall, half-brother two-year-old Daemeon Wall, maternal great-grandmother, 69-year-old Kathryn Murray, half-sister Rose Alwood, aged two, cousin Rose Alwood, aged two, and one-year-old half-sister Ariel Wall
Daily Mail
October 10, 2019
The mother of the nine-year-old boy from Illinois who has been charged with murder in connection to a deadly arson fire that killed most of his immediate family has spoken out for the first time, saying that the boy suffers from mental illness and is not a monster.
Katrina Alwood described her heartbreak Thursday, two days after her sole surviving child, Kyle Alwood was charged with five counts of first-degree murder, two counts of arson and one count of aggravated arson, after he allegedly intentionally set his family's mobile home ablaze in April.
The inferno near the village of Goodfield killed Kyle's stepfather, 34-year-old Jason Wall, half-brother two-year-old Daemeon Wall, maternal great-grandmother, 69-year-old Kathryn Murray, half-sister Rose Alwood, aged two, cousin Rose Alwood, aged two, and one-year-old half-sister Ariel Wall
Thursday, October 10, 2019
WELL, THAT DIDN'T TAKE LONG
by Bob Walsh
The Turks and the Syrians, both acting more or less in unison, launched an attack against the Kurds just about 24 hours after Trump threw the Kurds under the bus. The Kurds have requested air support assistance from their used-to-be allies, us. They were told to kick rocks.
We guaranteed the territorial integrity of the Ukraine when they gave up the nukes they had after the break-up of the old USSR. Russia annexed the Crimea and have more or less occupied a large swath of the Ukraine. We did nothing. Now the Kurds (who helped us big time in that part of the world) are being turned into live targets. We are, thus far, doing nothing.
Is ANYBODY going to trust our word on anything in the near future? I sure as hell wouldn't. I don't particularly want us to continue to be the world's police force, but our word should be good for something.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is Trump's betrayal of our allies, the Kurds. And adding insult to injury, Trump invites Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the White House in retaliation for the flack he's been getting from not only Democrats, but Republicans too. Lindsey Graham called Trump's decision “a stain on America's honor.”
It appears that the reports of Trump giving Erdogan the 'green light' to attack the Kurds are true. Betraual of the Kurds, who fought alongside us for four years against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and shed blood that would otherwise have been shed by American soldiers, is a new low ... it's beneath low!
This is the straw that broke the camel's back. I will not vote for president in the 2020 election. The Democratic candidates are absolutely unacceptable to me. Three years ago, I held my nose when I voted against Hillary. Next year, I won't have to hold my nose because I'm not voting for Trump.
The Turks and the Syrians, both acting more or less in unison, launched an attack against the Kurds just about 24 hours after Trump threw the Kurds under the bus. The Kurds have requested air support assistance from their used-to-be allies, us. They were told to kick rocks.
We guaranteed the territorial integrity of the Ukraine when they gave up the nukes they had after the break-up of the old USSR. Russia annexed the Crimea and have more or less occupied a large swath of the Ukraine. We did nothing. Now the Kurds (who helped us big time in that part of the world) are being turned into live targets. We are, thus far, doing nothing.
Is ANYBODY going to trust our word on anything in the near future? I sure as hell wouldn't. I don't particularly want us to continue to be the world's police force, but our word should be good for something.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is Trump's betrayal of our allies, the Kurds. And adding insult to injury, Trump invites Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the White House in retaliation for the flack he's been getting from not only Democrats, but Republicans too. Lindsey Graham called Trump's decision “a stain on America's honor.”
It appears that the reports of Trump giving Erdogan the 'green light' to attack the Kurds are true. Betraual of the Kurds, who fought alongside us for four years against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and shed blood that would otherwise have been shed by American soldiers, is a new low ... it's beneath low!
This is the straw that broke the camel's back. I will not vote for president in the 2020 election. The Democratic candidates are absolutely unacceptable to me. Three years ago, I held my nose when I voted against Hillary. Next year, I won't have to hold my nose because I'm not voting for Trump.
FALSE TESTIMONY
Sworn statements at a recent congressional hearing on policing veered sharply from the truth: here are the facts
By Heather Mac Donald
City Journal
September 26, 2019
The anti-police narrative depends on suppression of facts, and the duplicity of anti-cop forces reached a shameless new low at a congressional hearing last week. Committee members should sanction the false testimony, given under oath, and publicly correct the record.
The House Judiciary Committee, now controlled by Democrats, had called a hearing to address a “series of deaths of unarmed African-American men while in police custody” as well as the “mistrust between police and marginalized communities.” Throughout the four-hour session, a photo array of blacks killed by the police played continuously on video screens around the room, interspersed with statistics allegedly proving that the police harbor lethal racist bias. Committee chairman Jerry Nadler claimed in his opening remarks that the “frequency of these killings and the absence of full accountability for those responsible send a message to members of the African American community that Black Lives Do Not Matter.” Nadler invoked the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Freddie Gray in Baltimore, as examples of “police misconduct against African-Americans,” though Barack Obama’s Justice Department found no misconduct in the first case, and criminal charges against the Freddie Gray officers were dismissed either before or after trial.
Minutes before the hearing was scheduled to begin, Al Sharpton escorted Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, to the witness table, surrounded by a mob of photographers. Garner had tragically died of a heart attack after New York Police Department officers tried to arrest him for selling loose cigarettes in July 2014; Garner resisted arrest, and one of the officers used a chokehold to take him down. Garner’s repeated last words—“I can’t breathe”—became an international rallying cry against police brutality. Carr gave impassioned testimony denouncing the lack of consequences for the police “murder” of her son: after five years of federal and local investigation, the officer who used the fatal chokehold was fired, but no prosecutions or other actions in the case have taken place. Carr left the witness table after her remarks to sit in the spectator section, but she remained a frequent reference point for the Democratic argument that the police devalue minority lives.
The eight remaining witnesses then began their testimony; I was one of the two witnesses called by the Republican minority. I asserted that the narrative that we are experiencing an epidemic of racially biased police shootings of black men was false. A study published this August in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences was just the latest piece of research to undercut that narrative, I said. The study, by faculty at Michigan State University and the University of Maryland at College Park, found that it is the rate of violent crime that determines fatal police shootings. The more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that members of that group will be fatally shot by a police officer. In fact, black civilians are shot less, compared with whites, than their rates of violent crime would predict. There was no evidence that officer race (i.e., whiteness) predicted the race of the shooting victim or that there was anti-black bias in fatal police shootings.
Next up was Phillip Atiba Goff. Goff heads the Center for Policing Equity at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice; the Center purports to document police bias through the use of data. Goff dramatically announced that his “love of country” and his “vocation as a scientist” required him to put aside his prepared remarks to “correct the record” so marred by my testimony. The authors of the PNAS study had recently acknowledged that their “central causal claim” was “unsupported by the data and factually wrong,” Goff asserted. Theirs is a “correlational” study, Goff said accusingly, and the “authors themselves have admitted to others in the scientific community that the central causal claim that they make, which is that there is no bias in [police shootings], is unsupported by the data.” Goff refused to be part of a “laundromat for junk science,” he concluded.
After the final witness—a former civil rights attorney in the Obama Justice Department who sued police departments for civil rights violations— completed her testimony, Chairman Nadler granted the minority request that I be given a minute and a half to respond to Goff. I said that the PNAS study was hardly an outlier; previous analyses had reached the same no-bias conclusion, including a 2017 paper by Harvard economist Roland Fryer that found no evidence of racial discrimination in shootings; a lab study of police shoot-don’t-shoot decisions in the state of Washington that found that officers in a realistic video simulator were three times less likely to shoot unarmed black suspects than unarmed white suspects; and shoot-don’t-shoot experiments by the University of Chicago’s Josh Correll that also found that police don’t shoot unarmed black civilians at any higher rate than unarmed white civilians. (Correll is now at the University of Colorado, Boulder.)
Nadler invited Goff to reply—and gave him nearly twice the time I had been given to respond. “None of that is true,” Goff claimed. Roland Fryer has “confessed to being embarrassed” by his study, which “has been roundly debunked,” Goff said. The Washington simulator study was not timed—so, according to Goff, irrelevant. And it was simply inaccurate to say that Correll’s research revealed no bias. “It absolutely did.” Goff brushed off as of little interest Correll’s “error” rate finding—the fact that officers don’t mistakenly shoot unarmed blacks at a higher rate than unarmed whites. What should matter, Goff said, is that the black armed suspects in Correll’s experiments were “shot more quickly; white armed suspects were shot more slowly.”
It is Goff’s testimony that was inaccurate, however—to say the least. The authors of the PNAS study have not acknowledged that their work was “factually wrong” or “unsupported by the data.” To the contrary, they have reaffirmed their research. Nor has Roland Fryer confessed to being embarrassed by his study. Goff apparently made up these allegations out of whole cloth.
The original findings of the PNAS study “largely stand unchanged,” wrote two of the authors in response to a critique of their paper from two Princeton politics professors. That critique “in no way invalidates” the central claim regarding the lack of anti-black racial disparities among those fatally shot by the police, reported David Johnson, a postdoctoral researcher in the Lab for Applied Social Science Research at the University of Maryland, and Joseph Cesario, a professor of psychology at Michigan State University. Even under the study design proposed by the critics, there is again “no significant evidence of anti-black disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police,” Johnson and Cesario conclude.
After the hearing, I asked Fryer if he had repudiated his study. “I literally have absolutely no clue what Goff is talking about,” Fryer wrote back in an email. “My study was published in the top Econ journal [The Journal of Political Economy].” So confident remains Fryer in his findings that he pointed me to another paper of his in the American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings) that reaffirmed his Journal of Political Economy results. Fryer found that after controlling for whether the suspect was armed, the nature of the suspect’s encounter with the officer, and other relevant factors, blacks in Houston were “27.4 percent less likely to be shot at by police relative to non-black, non-Hispanics. Investigating the intensive margin—who shoots first in an encounter with police or how many bullets were discharged in the endeavor—there are no detectable racial differences.” (Italics in original.) The evidence of police bias in some studies is “mainly a result of misspecified regression equations,” Fryer concluded. The most “granular data”—which takes into account crime rates and civilian behavior before and during a police-civilian interaction—suggest that there is “no bias in police shootings.”
I sent a request to the Center for Policing Equity that Goff supply a citation to the alleged retractions by Johnson, Cesario, and Fryer; there has been no response.
Let’s examine the Princeton critique of the PNAS paper directly. The PNAS researchers had constructed a database of 917 officer-involved fatal shootings from 2015. Fifty-five percent of the victims were white, 27 percent were black, and 19 percent were Hispanic. (Since 2015, the proportion of people killed by the police who are black has dropped; in 2018, it was 23 percent, according to the Washington Post’s database on fatal police shootings.) The PNAS analysis focused on the characteristics of each individual fatal police shooting to test statistically whether officer or civilian race predicted fatal police shootings. As the authors put it in their response paper, they calculated the “probability that a civilian is Black, Hispanic, or White given that a person has been fatally shot.” They found that officer or civilian race does not predict fatal police shootings; posing a threat to officers or civilians does.
The Princeton authors—Dean Knox and Jonathan Mummulo—argued that the PNAS study used the wrong calculation. Instead, the only meaningful test of police bias would look at the probability that a person in some wider population (beyond victims of fatal police shootings) will be shot given his race. Johnson and Cesario readily acknowledge that Knox and Mummulo’s approach is valid, but they reject the implication that their method is not—contrary to Goff’s claims.
The dispute implicates a vexed issue in the analysis of police activity: the benchmark problem. Racial-advocacy groups and the media invariably use population data as the benchmark for evaluating bias in police stops, arrests, or shootings: if blacks have proportionally more encounters with the police than their representation in the local population, police bias must be the reason, conclude those advocacy groups and the press. In New York City, for example, blacks are about 23 percent of the civilian population, but they made up 57 percent of stop, question, and frisk subjects in 2018. Whites are about 34 percent of New Yorkers; they made up 8.4 percent of stop subjects in 2018. Case closed, argue the advocates. The police are singling out blacks based on their race.
Others, myself included, have argued that crime rates should be the relevant benchmark for police activity, since policing today is data-driven: officers are deployed to where civilians are being victimized, and that is overwhelmingly in minority neighborhoods. If crime rates are used to measure police activity, policing no longer looks disproportionate. In New York, to continue the example, blacks were 72.6 percent of known shooting suspects in 2018, according to victim and witness identifications (those victims and witnesses being overwhelmingly black themselves). Whites in 2018 were 2.8 percent of known shootings suspects. Black and white stop rates—57 percent and 8.4 percent—are easily commensurate with rates of violent street crime.
The PNAS analysis was a deliberate attempt to sidestep the benchmark problem by testing for bias within the finite set of police shooting victims. The Princeton approach would revive the benchmark issue by requiring the choice of a benchmark against which to measure the probability of police shootings. In their response to Knox and Mummulo, the PNAS authors note that under a number of reasonable benchmarks, there is still no evidence of police bias in fatal shootings. Measured against Centers for Disease Control data about homicide rates, for example, blacks are five times less likely than whites to be fatally shot by the police. One could also observe that blacks constituted 62 percent of all robbery defendants, 57 percent of all murder defendants, and 45 percent of all assault defendants in America’s 75 largest counties in 2009, the latest year for which such county data is available, though blacks made up only 15 percent of the population in those counties, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. A roughly 25 percent share of police shooting fatalities is easily in line with what those county crime rates would predict, since police shootings will occur where officers are most likely to encounter armed and violent suspects.
Goff dismissed the PNAS study as “correlational”—meaning, it looked for causal associations among existing data, rather than setting up an experiment to generate new data and test the effects of deliberately introduced potential causes. But every other study of fatal police shootings is also correlational, since it would be ethically impossible to conduct an experiment regarding fatal police shootings. Goff’s implication that the PNAS study was illegitimate because it was correlational was another misrepresentation.
Ironically, Goff’s Center for Policing Equity has conducted its own study of police use of lethal force that was not only—inevitably—correlational but that reached the same conclusion as the PNAS and Fryer studies: there is no bias in lethal shootings by the police. The average lethal-force rate against white civilians is over twice that against black civilians for every 1,000 violent arrests, and nearly twice that for every 1,000 arrests overall, the study found. That result was buried in the report, however, and went unmentioned in the executive summary or introduction. I didn’t bring it up at the hearing, figuring that Goff’s willingness to distort would reach a hysterical pitch if I referenced his own work.
Goff was correct that the officers in the Washington state simulator study were not under artificial time pressure to make their shoot-don’t-shoot decisions, unlike the Correll studies, which give officers at most 750 milliseconds to respond to potential gun-toting suspects. That absence of a time limit was designed to replicate conditions on the street; even without a time limit, participants’ physiological response showed considerable stress.
Goff’s attempt to minimize the Correll finding that officers do not shoot unarmed blacks at a higher rate than unarmed whites was sheer desperation, since that finding cuts the heart out of the Black Lives Matter narrative. Correll suggests plausible reasons why officers may be quicker—measured by milliseconds—to reach a shoot decision when confronted by an armed black suspect compared with an armed white suspect: their experience with the demographics of street crime. Not only do blacks commit the vast majority of drive-by shootings (and whites almost none), the Department of Justice has found that police officers are five times more likely to die at the hands of a black suspect than a white suspect.
Goff’s conclusion in his second response to my remarks (“The idea that there is not bias is a—it is just not a serious position when you look at the corpus of the science”) was untrue. A robust body of scientific literature challenges the received position that policing—including the use of lethal force—is permeated by racial bias. Goff later said that “there is not a study that takes into account crime rates” that doesn’t find bias. That statement is also untrue. Goff misrepresented specific items in that literature, including the PNAS and Fryer studies, and the general tenor of that literature, as well. The House Judiciary Committee should call him back and demand that he correct the Congressional Record.
As for the rest of the hearing, the Democratic misrepresentations regarding the police were of the more usual nature, reflecting generalized prejudice and ignorance. Ron Davis, who headed the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) in the Obama Justice Department, claimed: “The idea that police themselves can reduce crime is false. It is completely false.” This statement, too, was aimed at my testimony, which had also documented the New York policing revolution’s radical effect on the city’s crime rates. University of California, Berkeley, criminologist Franklin Zimring has made the most thorough study of New York’s crime decline to date and concluded that only policing explains it. Davis’s rejection of the efficacy of policing is an odd position for a COPS director to take, since the office distributes federal tax dollars to local police agencies to fight crime. Davis also claimed that white supremacists were infiltrating law enforcement but offered no documentation for that claim.
White supremacy and white nationalism were regular talking points for the Democratic committee members as well. “When we refuse to acknowledge the structural biases that are within our institutions, when we refuse to acknowledge the institutionalized racism that exists within all systems here in government, in law enforcement, in every system, . . . if we don’t acknowledge that white supremacy, if we don't acknowledge the history of institutionalized racism in this country, we cannot move forward,” announced Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington.
The Republicans on the committee failed to push back against this narrative of systemic police bias, choosing instead to tell feel-good stories about “our brave men and women in uniform.” Such tales do little to rebut Black Lives Matter ideology, since both statements could be true: individual officers display heroism, and policing is infected by “structural racism,” in Davis’s words. The only way to dislodge the “endemic racism” argument is to challenge its factual basis directly. I was the only witness at the hearing with the ability to do so, but the Republicans asked me not one question. This is not a matter of personal ego but rather of the public battle of ideas.
The Democratic committee members and their witnesses clearly laid out their agenda should they retake the White House and Senate: mandatory implicit-bias training for cops, a huge waste of money that could be spent instead on tactical and de-escalation training; mandatory racial-profiling data collection, which will be measured, misleadingly, against a population benchmark; racial quotas for police hiring, which require lowered standards; and more federal consent decrees for police departments, which cripple the ability of cops to engage in proactive policing and divert millions of dollars into the pockets of federal monitors. As inimical as these policy items are to effective policing, the narrative that drives them—that the police are a threat to black communities—is more dangerous still. That narrative rests on duplicity, as amply demonstrated at last week’s hearings. Republicans, who invoke patriotism on a regular basis, are doing the country no favors by ceding the criminal-justice narrative to the activists and race-baiters.
By Heather Mac Donald
City Journal
September 26, 2019
The anti-police narrative depends on suppression of facts, and the duplicity of anti-cop forces reached a shameless new low at a congressional hearing last week. Committee members should sanction the false testimony, given under oath, and publicly correct the record.
The House Judiciary Committee, now controlled by Democrats, had called a hearing to address a “series of deaths of unarmed African-American men while in police custody” as well as the “mistrust between police and marginalized communities.” Throughout the four-hour session, a photo array of blacks killed by the police played continuously on video screens around the room, interspersed with statistics allegedly proving that the police harbor lethal racist bias. Committee chairman Jerry Nadler claimed in his opening remarks that the “frequency of these killings and the absence of full accountability for those responsible send a message to members of the African American community that Black Lives Do Not Matter.” Nadler invoked the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Freddie Gray in Baltimore, as examples of “police misconduct against African-Americans,” though Barack Obama’s Justice Department found no misconduct in the first case, and criminal charges against the Freddie Gray officers were dismissed either before or after trial.
Minutes before the hearing was scheduled to begin, Al Sharpton escorted Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, to the witness table, surrounded by a mob of photographers. Garner had tragically died of a heart attack after New York Police Department officers tried to arrest him for selling loose cigarettes in July 2014; Garner resisted arrest, and one of the officers used a chokehold to take him down. Garner’s repeated last words—“I can’t breathe”—became an international rallying cry against police brutality. Carr gave impassioned testimony denouncing the lack of consequences for the police “murder” of her son: after five years of federal and local investigation, the officer who used the fatal chokehold was fired, but no prosecutions or other actions in the case have taken place. Carr left the witness table after her remarks to sit in the spectator section, but she remained a frequent reference point for the Democratic argument that the police devalue minority lives.
The eight remaining witnesses then began their testimony; I was one of the two witnesses called by the Republican minority. I asserted that the narrative that we are experiencing an epidemic of racially biased police shootings of black men was false. A study published this August in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences was just the latest piece of research to undercut that narrative, I said. The study, by faculty at Michigan State University and the University of Maryland at College Park, found that it is the rate of violent crime that determines fatal police shootings. The more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that members of that group will be fatally shot by a police officer. In fact, black civilians are shot less, compared with whites, than their rates of violent crime would predict. There was no evidence that officer race (i.e., whiteness) predicted the race of the shooting victim or that there was anti-black bias in fatal police shootings.
Next up was Phillip Atiba Goff. Goff heads the Center for Policing Equity at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice; the Center purports to document police bias through the use of data. Goff dramatically announced that his “love of country” and his “vocation as a scientist” required him to put aside his prepared remarks to “correct the record” so marred by my testimony. The authors of the PNAS study had recently acknowledged that their “central causal claim” was “unsupported by the data and factually wrong,” Goff asserted. Theirs is a “correlational” study, Goff said accusingly, and the “authors themselves have admitted to others in the scientific community that the central causal claim that they make, which is that there is no bias in [police shootings], is unsupported by the data.” Goff refused to be part of a “laundromat for junk science,” he concluded.
After the final witness—a former civil rights attorney in the Obama Justice Department who sued police departments for civil rights violations— completed her testimony, Chairman Nadler granted the minority request that I be given a minute and a half to respond to Goff. I said that the PNAS study was hardly an outlier; previous analyses had reached the same no-bias conclusion, including a 2017 paper by Harvard economist Roland Fryer that found no evidence of racial discrimination in shootings; a lab study of police shoot-don’t-shoot decisions in the state of Washington that found that officers in a realistic video simulator were three times less likely to shoot unarmed black suspects than unarmed white suspects; and shoot-don’t-shoot experiments by the University of Chicago’s Josh Correll that also found that police don’t shoot unarmed black civilians at any higher rate than unarmed white civilians. (Correll is now at the University of Colorado, Boulder.)
Nadler invited Goff to reply—and gave him nearly twice the time I had been given to respond. “None of that is true,” Goff claimed. Roland Fryer has “confessed to being embarrassed” by his study, which “has been roundly debunked,” Goff said. The Washington simulator study was not timed—so, according to Goff, irrelevant. And it was simply inaccurate to say that Correll’s research revealed no bias. “It absolutely did.” Goff brushed off as of little interest Correll’s “error” rate finding—the fact that officers don’t mistakenly shoot unarmed blacks at a higher rate than unarmed whites. What should matter, Goff said, is that the black armed suspects in Correll’s experiments were “shot more quickly; white armed suspects were shot more slowly.”
It is Goff’s testimony that was inaccurate, however—to say the least. The authors of the PNAS study have not acknowledged that their work was “factually wrong” or “unsupported by the data.” To the contrary, they have reaffirmed their research. Nor has Roland Fryer confessed to being embarrassed by his study. Goff apparently made up these allegations out of whole cloth.
The original findings of the PNAS study “largely stand unchanged,” wrote two of the authors in response to a critique of their paper from two Princeton politics professors. That critique “in no way invalidates” the central claim regarding the lack of anti-black racial disparities among those fatally shot by the police, reported David Johnson, a postdoctoral researcher in the Lab for Applied Social Science Research at the University of Maryland, and Joseph Cesario, a professor of psychology at Michigan State University. Even under the study design proposed by the critics, there is again “no significant evidence of anti-black disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police,” Johnson and Cesario conclude.
After the hearing, I asked Fryer if he had repudiated his study. “I literally have absolutely no clue what Goff is talking about,” Fryer wrote back in an email. “My study was published in the top Econ journal [The Journal of Political Economy].” So confident remains Fryer in his findings that he pointed me to another paper of his in the American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings) that reaffirmed his Journal of Political Economy results. Fryer found that after controlling for whether the suspect was armed, the nature of the suspect’s encounter with the officer, and other relevant factors, blacks in Houston were “27.4 percent less likely to be shot at by police relative to non-black, non-Hispanics. Investigating the intensive margin—who shoots first in an encounter with police or how many bullets were discharged in the endeavor—there are no detectable racial differences.” (Italics in original.) The evidence of police bias in some studies is “mainly a result of misspecified regression equations,” Fryer concluded. The most “granular data”—which takes into account crime rates and civilian behavior before and during a police-civilian interaction—suggest that there is “no bias in police shootings.”
I sent a request to the Center for Policing Equity that Goff supply a citation to the alleged retractions by Johnson, Cesario, and Fryer; there has been no response.
Let’s examine the Princeton critique of the PNAS paper directly. The PNAS researchers had constructed a database of 917 officer-involved fatal shootings from 2015. Fifty-five percent of the victims were white, 27 percent were black, and 19 percent were Hispanic. (Since 2015, the proportion of people killed by the police who are black has dropped; in 2018, it was 23 percent, according to the Washington Post’s database on fatal police shootings.) The PNAS analysis focused on the characteristics of each individual fatal police shooting to test statistically whether officer or civilian race predicted fatal police shootings. As the authors put it in their response paper, they calculated the “probability that a civilian is Black, Hispanic, or White given that a person has been fatally shot.” They found that officer or civilian race does not predict fatal police shootings; posing a threat to officers or civilians does.
The Princeton authors—Dean Knox and Jonathan Mummulo—argued that the PNAS study used the wrong calculation. Instead, the only meaningful test of police bias would look at the probability that a person in some wider population (beyond victims of fatal police shootings) will be shot given his race. Johnson and Cesario readily acknowledge that Knox and Mummulo’s approach is valid, but they reject the implication that their method is not—contrary to Goff’s claims.
The dispute implicates a vexed issue in the analysis of police activity: the benchmark problem. Racial-advocacy groups and the media invariably use population data as the benchmark for evaluating bias in police stops, arrests, or shootings: if blacks have proportionally more encounters with the police than their representation in the local population, police bias must be the reason, conclude those advocacy groups and the press. In New York City, for example, blacks are about 23 percent of the civilian population, but they made up 57 percent of stop, question, and frisk subjects in 2018. Whites are about 34 percent of New Yorkers; they made up 8.4 percent of stop subjects in 2018. Case closed, argue the advocates. The police are singling out blacks based on their race.
Others, myself included, have argued that crime rates should be the relevant benchmark for police activity, since policing today is data-driven: officers are deployed to where civilians are being victimized, and that is overwhelmingly in minority neighborhoods. If crime rates are used to measure police activity, policing no longer looks disproportionate. In New York, to continue the example, blacks were 72.6 percent of known shooting suspects in 2018, according to victim and witness identifications (those victims and witnesses being overwhelmingly black themselves). Whites in 2018 were 2.8 percent of known shootings suspects. Black and white stop rates—57 percent and 8.4 percent—are easily commensurate with rates of violent street crime.
The PNAS analysis was a deliberate attempt to sidestep the benchmark problem by testing for bias within the finite set of police shooting victims. The Princeton approach would revive the benchmark issue by requiring the choice of a benchmark against which to measure the probability of police shootings. In their response to Knox and Mummulo, the PNAS authors note that under a number of reasonable benchmarks, there is still no evidence of police bias in fatal shootings. Measured against Centers for Disease Control data about homicide rates, for example, blacks are five times less likely than whites to be fatally shot by the police. One could also observe that blacks constituted 62 percent of all robbery defendants, 57 percent of all murder defendants, and 45 percent of all assault defendants in America’s 75 largest counties in 2009, the latest year for which such county data is available, though blacks made up only 15 percent of the population in those counties, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. A roughly 25 percent share of police shooting fatalities is easily in line with what those county crime rates would predict, since police shootings will occur where officers are most likely to encounter armed and violent suspects.
Goff dismissed the PNAS study as “correlational”—meaning, it looked for causal associations among existing data, rather than setting up an experiment to generate new data and test the effects of deliberately introduced potential causes. But every other study of fatal police shootings is also correlational, since it would be ethically impossible to conduct an experiment regarding fatal police shootings. Goff’s implication that the PNAS study was illegitimate because it was correlational was another misrepresentation.
Ironically, Goff’s Center for Policing Equity has conducted its own study of police use of lethal force that was not only—inevitably—correlational but that reached the same conclusion as the PNAS and Fryer studies: there is no bias in lethal shootings by the police. The average lethal-force rate against white civilians is over twice that against black civilians for every 1,000 violent arrests, and nearly twice that for every 1,000 arrests overall, the study found. That result was buried in the report, however, and went unmentioned in the executive summary or introduction. I didn’t bring it up at the hearing, figuring that Goff’s willingness to distort would reach a hysterical pitch if I referenced his own work.
Goff was correct that the officers in the Washington state simulator study were not under artificial time pressure to make their shoot-don’t-shoot decisions, unlike the Correll studies, which give officers at most 750 milliseconds to respond to potential gun-toting suspects. That absence of a time limit was designed to replicate conditions on the street; even without a time limit, participants’ physiological response showed considerable stress.
Goff’s attempt to minimize the Correll finding that officers do not shoot unarmed blacks at a higher rate than unarmed whites was sheer desperation, since that finding cuts the heart out of the Black Lives Matter narrative. Correll suggests plausible reasons why officers may be quicker—measured by milliseconds—to reach a shoot decision when confronted by an armed black suspect compared with an armed white suspect: their experience with the demographics of street crime. Not only do blacks commit the vast majority of drive-by shootings (and whites almost none), the Department of Justice has found that police officers are five times more likely to die at the hands of a black suspect than a white suspect.
Goff’s conclusion in his second response to my remarks (“The idea that there is not bias is a—it is just not a serious position when you look at the corpus of the science”) was untrue. A robust body of scientific literature challenges the received position that policing—including the use of lethal force—is permeated by racial bias. Goff later said that “there is not a study that takes into account crime rates” that doesn’t find bias. That statement is also untrue. Goff misrepresented specific items in that literature, including the PNAS and Fryer studies, and the general tenor of that literature, as well. The House Judiciary Committee should call him back and demand that he correct the Congressional Record.
As for the rest of the hearing, the Democratic misrepresentations regarding the police were of the more usual nature, reflecting generalized prejudice and ignorance. Ron Davis, who headed the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) in the Obama Justice Department, claimed: “The idea that police themselves can reduce crime is false. It is completely false.” This statement, too, was aimed at my testimony, which had also documented the New York policing revolution’s radical effect on the city’s crime rates. University of California, Berkeley, criminologist Franklin Zimring has made the most thorough study of New York’s crime decline to date and concluded that only policing explains it. Davis’s rejection of the efficacy of policing is an odd position for a COPS director to take, since the office distributes federal tax dollars to local police agencies to fight crime. Davis also claimed that white supremacists were infiltrating law enforcement but offered no documentation for that claim.
White supremacy and white nationalism were regular talking points for the Democratic committee members as well. “When we refuse to acknowledge the structural biases that are within our institutions, when we refuse to acknowledge the institutionalized racism that exists within all systems here in government, in law enforcement, in every system, . . . if we don’t acknowledge that white supremacy, if we don't acknowledge the history of institutionalized racism in this country, we cannot move forward,” announced Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington.
The Republicans on the committee failed to push back against this narrative of systemic police bias, choosing instead to tell feel-good stories about “our brave men and women in uniform.” Such tales do little to rebut Black Lives Matter ideology, since both statements could be true: individual officers display heroism, and policing is infected by “structural racism,” in Davis’s words. The only way to dislodge the “endemic racism” argument is to challenge its factual basis directly. I was the only witness at the hearing with the ability to do so, but the Republicans asked me not one question. This is not a matter of personal ego but rather of the public battle of ideas.
The Democratic committee members and their witnesses clearly laid out their agenda should they retake the White House and Senate: mandatory implicit-bias training for cops, a huge waste of money that could be spent instead on tactical and de-escalation training; mandatory racial-profiling data collection, which will be measured, misleadingly, against a population benchmark; racial quotas for police hiring, which require lowered standards; and more federal consent decrees for police departments, which cripple the ability of cops to engage in proactive policing and divert millions of dollars into the pockets of federal monitors. As inimical as these policy items are to effective policing, the narrative that drives them—that the police are a threat to black communities—is more dangerous still. That narrative rests on duplicity, as amply demonstrated at last week’s hearings. Republicans, who invoke patriotism on a regular basis, are doing the country no favors by ceding the criminal-justice narrative to the activists and race-baiters.
DIANE FEINSTEIN GOES WITH JOE BITE-ME
by Bob Walsh
Diane Feinstein, the superannuated senior senator from the formerly great state of California, has endorsed Joe Biden in his run for President, ignoring Kamala Harris, the one-time darling of the liberal media (for about 12 seconds several months ago). Harris is polling in single digits in her own state and is running around 3-4% in national polls.
At more or less the same time Crazy Bernie announced he is cutting back significantly on campaign appearances, scheduling one per day or even less in the wake of his heart attack last week. Bernie is toast, he is just unwilling to realize it yet.
Crazy at it sounds the Dems might actually nominate Pocahontas Warren, unless Hillary swoops in to "save the day." That convention is going to be fun to watch.
Diane Feinstein, the superannuated senior senator from the formerly great state of California, has endorsed Joe Biden in his run for President, ignoring Kamala Harris, the one-time darling of the liberal media (for about 12 seconds several months ago). Harris is polling in single digits in her own state and is running around 3-4% in national polls.
At more or less the same time Crazy Bernie announced he is cutting back significantly on campaign appearances, scheduling one per day or even less in the wake of his heart attack last week. Bernie is toast, he is just unwilling to realize it yet.
Crazy at it sounds the Dems might actually nominate Pocahontas Warren, unless Hillary swoops in to "save the day." That convention is going to be fun to watch.
MATT LAUER ACCUSED OF ANAL RAPE
'His open letter was a case study in victim shaming': Matt Lauer anal rape accuser Brooke Nevils slams her former NBC co-worker for his public 1,400 word response to her assault claim which he called 'consensual'
Daily Mail
October 9, 2019
Brooke Nevils released a statement slamming Matt Lauer for 'victim shaming' her in his three-page open letter Wednesday.
'There's a Matt Lauer that millions of Americans watched on TV every morning for two decades. And there is the Matt Lauer who this morning attempted to bully a former colleague into silence,' the statement reads.
Nevil was working as a producer for Meredith Vieira when she said he attacked her in his hotel room while they were covering the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Now, she has shared more details of the alleged incident including the claim that he anally raped her after 'pushing' her on to his bed.
Lauer responded in an angry 1,400 letter, saying it was a consensual incident which sparked their affair.
'I believe her': Former Today show host Ann Curry speaks out to defend the 'talented' NBC producer accusing Matt Lauer of anal rape
In a tweet on Wednesday afternoon, Curry said she believed Brooke Nevils claim that Lauer assaulted her in 2014 while they were covering the Sochi Winter Olympics.
'We are disturbed to our core': Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb somberly address rape allegation against Matt Lauer and say they support his accuser
The pair, who replaced Lauer as a duo when he was fired by by Today in 2017, said they stood with the alleged victim, Brooke Nevils, and commended her for coming forward.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Matt Lauer … What a schmuck!
Daily Mail
October 9, 2019
Brooke Nevils released a statement slamming Matt Lauer for 'victim shaming' her in his three-page open letter Wednesday.
'There's a Matt Lauer that millions of Americans watched on TV every morning for two decades. And there is the Matt Lauer who this morning attempted to bully a former colleague into silence,' the statement reads.
Nevil was working as a producer for Meredith Vieira when she said he attacked her in his hotel room while they were covering the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Now, she has shared more details of the alleged incident including the claim that he anally raped her after 'pushing' her on to his bed.
Lauer responded in an angry 1,400 letter, saying it was a consensual incident which sparked their affair.
'I believe her': Former Today show host Ann Curry speaks out to defend the 'talented' NBC producer accusing Matt Lauer of anal rape
In a tweet on Wednesday afternoon, Curry said she believed Brooke Nevils claim that Lauer assaulted her in 2014 while they were covering the Sochi Winter Olympics.
'We are disturbed to our core': Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb somberly address rape allegation against Matt Lauer and say they support his accuser
The pair, who replaced Lauer as a duo when he was fired by by Today in 2017, said they stood with the alleged victim, Brooke Nevils, and commended her for coming forward.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Matt Lauer … What a schmuck!
HARD CHOICES
By Trey Rusk
Code 3 Cop
October 9, 2019
How many times have you come to a decision-making crossroad? During my law enforcement career, it was almost daily. Some of the on the job choices cops make can drastically effect people’s lives.
I always wanted to make the right decision for all parties involved. So, is a cop also a judge? To me, cops make more rulings on the job than most judges and most of the time they aren’t appealed.
My rulings and their outcomes:
I have been blamed for tearing a family apart.
(I have called CPS to save an abused family member.)
I have been blamed for putting a victim’s loved one in the penitentiary.
(I have arrested repeat criminal offenders. There were also other victims of their crimes.)
I have been involved in critical incidents where people have been hurt and even died.
(I have stopped a violent person from hurting someone.)
I have been blamed for people losing their livelihood.
(I have enforced laws that stopped poorly run businesses that took advantage of people.)
I have made friends never speak to me again.
(I did my job to the best of my ability, even knowing how it would make someone feel. I make no apologies. If you associate with criminals then you have to expect them to be arrested.)
The media has maligned me.
(All factors of an incident aren’t known. They usually never are until after the initial story has run.)
My career affected my family.
(Living with a police officer family member can be difficult. But sometimes it can also be rewarding.)
I have had people cry on my shoulder when told a relative has died.
(There is no easy way to be the bearer of grief. It’s like knocking on a door and handing out a broken heart.)
I have had to put down a dying domestic animal hit by a vehicle as it looked at me for comfort.
(I have had to comfort the family member who requested that it be done.)
As you can see, each one of the above statements also has a reason for my decision.
My first patrol sergeant told me, “Son, the weight of a badge is more than most people can handle. If the job was easy, anyone could do it and believe me when I tell you, most people wouldn’t last a month.”
Code 3 Cop
October 9, 2019
How many times have you come to a decision-making crossroad? During my law enforcement career, it was almost daily. Some of the on the job choices cops make can drastically effect people’s lives.
I always wanted to make the right decision for all parties involved. So, is a cop also a judge? To me, cops make more rulings on the job than most judges and most of the time they aren’t appealed.
My rulings and their outcomes:
I have been blamed for tearing a family apart.
(I have called CPS to save an abused family member.)
I have been blamed for putting a victim’s loved one in the penitentiary.
(I have arrested repeat criminal offenders. There were also other victims of their crimes.)
I have been involved in critical incidents where people have been hurt and even died.
(I have stopped a violent person from hurting someone.)
I have been blamed for people losing their livelihood.
(I have enforced laws that stopped poorly run businesses that took advantage of people.)
I have made friends never speak to me again.
(I did my job to the best of my ability, even knowing how it would make someone feel. I make no apologies. If you associate with criminals then you have to expect them to be arrested.)
The media has maligned me.
(All factors of an incident aren’t known. They usually never are until after the initial story has run.)
My career affected my family.
(Living with a police officer family member can be difficult. But sometimes it can also be rewarding.)
I have had people cry on my shoulder when told a relative has died.
(There is no easy way to be the bearer of grief. It’s like knocking on a door and handing out a broken heart.)
I have had to put down a dying domestic animal hit by a vehicle as it looked at me for comfort.
(I have had to comfort the family member who requested that it be done.)
As you can see, each one of the above statements also has a reason for my decision.
My first patrol sergeant told me, “Son, the weight of a badge is more than most people can handle. If the job was easy, anyone could do it and believe me when I tell you, most people wouldn’t last a month.”
A SHOT FOR EACH OF YOU
From Mexico, with love
By Danielle Roth-Avneri
Israel Hayom
October 8, 2019
In October 2016, the Mexican government fired Andres Roemer, a world-renowned thinker and author and the country's ambassador to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization after he refused to vote in favor of a resolution denying the Jewish people's ties to Jerusalem.
"It was the saddest day of my life," Roemer told Israel Hayom. "I was fired from my job unfairly."
Roemer, who is Jewish, was unwilling to vote against his conscience. And despite having paid a personal and professional price for the move, he insists the resolution he was told to support was a "crime against reason."
According to Roemer, it was due to his religion that Mexican government officials did not believe his motives were pure.
While serving as Mexico's UNESCO envoy, Roemer served alongside Israel's then-UNESCO Ambassador Carmel Shama-Hacohen, who has since been elected Ramat Gan's mayor.
When Shama-Hacohen was informed the name of the city's El Al Street needed to be changed, as Ramat Gan had annexed the adjacent city of Ramat Efal, which already had its own El Al Street, he asked residents if they would object to changing the name of their street in honor of Roemer, and they agreed.
Dan Wechtel, a resident of Roemer Street, told Israel Hayom he came home one evening to find a letter from Andres Roemer posted to the bulletin board in the lobby of his building that read: "Thank you. Happy New Year, and thank you. It has been one of the great privileges of my life to be part of your honorable place. This is a small and symbolic gift to remind you of my endless gratitude to you all."
The gift in question? A small bottle of tequila and a shot glass, from Mexico no less, had been left beside the door of each apartment in the building.
As Roemer explained to Israel Hayom, "Tequila is a drink that enters the body and makes you feel warm and happy. That is what I wanted them to have from me – warmth and happiness."
By Danielle Roth-Avneri
Israel Hayom
October 8, 2019
In October 2016, the Mexican government fired Andres Roemer, a world-renowned thinker and author and the country's ambassador to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization after he refused to vote in favor of a resolution denying the Jewish people's ties to Jerusalem.
"It was the saddest day of my life," Roemer told Israel Hayom. "I was fired from my job unfairly."
Roemer, who is Jewish, was unwilling to vote against his conscience. And despite having paid a personal and professional price for the move, he insists the resolution he was told to support was a "crime against reason."
According to Roemer, it was due to his religion that Mexican government officials did not believe his motives were pure.
While serving as Mexico's UNESCO envoy, Roemer served alongside Israel's then-UNESCO Ambassador Carmel Shama-Hacohen, who has since been elected Ramat Gan's mayor.
When Shama-Hacohen was informed the name of the city's El Al Street needed to be changed, as Ramat Gan had annexed the adjacent city of Ramat Efal, which already had its own El Al Street, he asked residents if they would object to changing the name of their street in honor of Roemer, and they agreed.
Dan Wechtel, a resident of Roemer Street, told Israel Hayom he came home one evening to find a letter from Andres Roemer posted to the bulletin board in the lobby of his building that read: "Thank you. Happy New Year, and thank you. It has been one of the great privileges of my life to be part of your honorable place. This is a small and symbolic gift to remind you of my endless gratitude to you all."
The gift in question? A small bottle of tequila and a shot glass, from Mexico no less, had been left beside the door of each apartment in the building.
As Roemer explained to Israel Hayom, "Tequila is a drink that enters the body and makes you feel warm and happy. That is what I wanted them to have from me – warmth and happiness."
Wednesday, October 09, 2019
TRUMP WILL HAVE THE BLOOD OF OUR KURDISH ALLIES ON HIS HANDS
Turkey fires first shots: Ankara bombs Kurdish supply route ahead of invasion to create a 'peace corridor' along border just hours after Trump pulls US troops - as president reveals he has invited Erdogan to the White House next month
Daily Mail
October 8, 2019
Turkish officials have confirmed the country's air force bombed a Kurdish border crossing between northern Syria and Iraq overnight on Monday in preparation for a military assault.
Ankara confirmed Tuesday that it plans to open up a 'peace corridor' along its border with Syria, which President Erdogan previously said will involve striking five Kurdish strongholds.
It comes after Donald Trump agreed to withdraw US troops from the region and hand control to Turkey, which considers the Kurds - America's main ally in the fight against ISIS - a terrorist group.
Trump has since denied he abandoned the Kurds, saying that any 'unforced or unnecessary fighting' would result in their economy being destroyed.
Trump defiantly tweeted that he'd invited Recep Tayyip Erdogan to meet with him at the White House in November - despite a backlash from his own party for pulling U.S. troops from Syria.
UPDATE
Turkey bombs Syria: President Erdogan says 'Operation Peace Spring' has begun, with air strikes targeting Syrian Kurds and ISIS fighters in bid to 'neutralize terror threats' two days after Donald Trump withdrew American troops
Daily Mail
October 9, 2019
The Turkish military operation into Syria has been launched with airstrikes and will be supported by artillery and howitzer fire, a Turkish security source confirmed today.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said Turkish warplanes struck its region in the northeast, sparking 'huge panic among people'. Video footage emerged appearing to show civilians fleeing the aerial bombardment as clouds of smoke rose into the sky from Turkish warplanes.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced his offensive into norther Syria had begun in a bid to 'bring peace to the area' by targeting terrorists.
The Syrian government earlier said that the 'hostile actions' of the Turkish government revealed its 'expansionist ambitions,' saying an attack on Syrian territory 'could not be justified'. Turkish troops crossed into Syria earlier today in preparation for an imminent attack on Kurdish territory, an official claimed.
Tanks, trucks, troops and supplies were pictured massing on the border overnight after President Trump announced on Monday US forces would leave the area.
Damascus today said it 'is determined and willing to confront a Turkish assault using all legitimate means'.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Reports allege that in a phone call Trump gave Erdogan the ‘green light’ to attack the Kurds. Trump denies it. But if it’s not true, then why did Erdogan’s forces start attacking the Kurds just as soon as US troops started their withdrawal from Syria?
Inviting Erdogan to the White House on top of abandoning our Kurdish allies to be slaughtered is utterly disgraceful and disgusting. Erdogan is an Islamic slimeball who has vowed to exterminate the Kurds. Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley said “Turkey is not our friend.” More shame on President Trump!
Daily Mail
October 8, 2019
Turkish officials have confirmed the country's air force bombed a Kurdish border crossing between northern Syria and Iraq overnight on Monday in preparation for a military assault.
Ankara confirmed Tuesday that it plans to open up a 'peace corridor' along its border with Syria, which President Erdogan previously said will involve striking five Kurdish strongholds.
It comes after Donald Trump agreed to withdraw US troops from the region and hand control to Turkey, which considers the Kurds - America's main ally in the fight against ISIS - a terrorist group.
Trump has since denied he abandoned the Kurds, saying that any 'unforced or unnecessary fighting' would result in their economy being destroyed.
Trump defiantly tweeted that he'd invited Recep Tayyip Erdogan to meet with him at the White House in November - despite a backlash from his own party for pulling U.S. troops from Syria.
UPDATE
Turkey bombs Syria: President Erdogan says 'Operation Peace Spring' has begun, with air strikes targeting Syrian Kurds and ISIS fighters in bid to 'neutralize terror threats' two days after Donald Trump withdrew American troops
Daily Mail
October 9, 2019
The Turkish military operation into Syria has been launched with airstrikes and will be supported by artillery and howitzer fire, a Turkish security source confirmed today.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said Turkish warplanes struck its region in the northeast, sparking 'huge panic among people'. Video footage emerged appearing to show civilians fleeing the aerial bombardment as clouds of smoke rose into the sky from Turkish warplanes.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced his offensive into norther Syria had begun in a bid to 'bring peace to the area' by targeting terrorists.
The Syrian government earlier said that the 'hostile actions' of the Turkish government revealed its 'expansionist ambitions,' saying an attack on Syrian territory 'could not be justified'. Turkish troops crossed into Syria earlier today in preparation for an imminent attack on Kurdish territory, an official claimed.
Tanks, trucks, troops and supplies were pictured massing on the border overnight after President Trump announced on Monday US forces would leave the area.
Damascus today said it 'is determined and willing to confront a Turkish assault using all legitimate means'.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Reports allege that in a phone call Trump gave Erdogan the ‘green light’ to attack the Kurds. Trump denies it. But if it’s not true, then why did Erdogan’s forces start attacking the Kurds just as soon as US troops started their withdrawal from Syria?
Inviting Erdogan to the White House on top of abandoning our Kurdish allies to be slaughtered is utterly disgraceful and disgusting. Erdogan is an Islamic slimeball who has vowed to exterminate the Kurds. Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley said “Turkey is not our friend.” More shame on President Trump!
CALIFORNIA STEALING ROAD TAX MONEY.......AGAIN
by Bob Walsh
The formerly great state of California is again stealing and diverting gas tax money to railroad projects and away from road repair (which is what gas tax is intended for) to comply with Governor Newsom's executive order to Caltrans to "reduce congestion through innovative strategies designed to encourage people to shift from cars to other modes of transportation."
Anybody seen Newsom commuting on a freaking electric scooter lately?
The formerly great state of California is again stealing and diverting gas tax money to railroad projects and away from road repair (which is what gas tax is intended for) to comply with Governor Newsom's executive order to Caltrans to "reduce congestion through innovative strategies designed to encourage people to shift from cars to other modes of transportation."
Anybody seen Newsom commuting on a freaking electric scooter lately?
CREATIVE SMALL BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES NOW ILLEGAL IN CALIFORNIA
by Bob Walsh
It is now illegal to sell appointments with the DMV. There was a pretty good business going on along these lines, some of it more or less formalized on line with web sites, some of it not so much, but it was there. Not any more. California, where we make it difficult to deal with the government and then stifle your ass if you come up with a workaround.
It is now illegal to sell appointments with the DMV. There was a pretty good business going on along these lines, some of it more or less formalized on line with web sites, some of it not so much, but it was there. Not any more. California, where we make it difficult to deal with the government and then stifle your ass if you come up with a workaround.
I.G. WANTS MORE MONEY AND STAFF
by Bob Walsh
The Inspector General's Office of the Attorney General has just asked for a significant increase in budget to hire more agents for their "Russian" probe. You are hopefully aware that this third I.G. report is looking into the origins of the fake "Russian Collusion" charges being pimped by the democrats. The I.G. wants to expand the timeline in both directions, going well back into the time when Barack the Magnificent was still President and running forward into the time covered by the now-more-or-less discredited nothing-to-see-here Mueller Probe.
One of the interesting things is Mueller's claim before congress, under oath, that he was NOT angling for the FBI gig after Comey went bye-bye. It seems not only was that a lie (perjury) be can now be proven to be a lie.
This whole thing is getting frantic and crazy. The second Horowitz report, on allegations of FISA court abuse, is in the hands of the A.G. and is due to be released to the public in about two weeks. Obviously that is not going to happen quickly to the Russia Collusion Fraud investigation if they are asking for a lot more money and staff.
One thing I can predict with a fair degree of certainty. It is going to be a choppy ride to the finish line. Don't you just love modern politics?
The Inspector General's Office of the Attorney General has just asked for a significant increase in budget to hire more agents for their "Russian" probe. You are hopefully aware that this third I.G. report is looking into the origins of the fake "Russian Collusion" charges being pimped by the democrats. The I.G. wants to expand the timeline in both directions, going well back into the time when Barack the Magnificent was still President and running forward into the time covered by the now-more-or-less discredited nothing-to-see-here Mueller Probe.
One of the interesting things is Mueller's claim before congress, under oath, that he was NOT angling for the FBI gig after Comey went bye-bye. It seems not only was that a lie (perjury) be can now be proven to be a lie.
This whole thing is getting frantic and crazy. The second Horowitz report, on allegations of FISA court abuse, is in the hands of the A.G. and is due to be released to the public in about two weeks. Obviously that is not going to happen quickly to the Russia Collusion Fraud investigation if they are asking for a lot more money and staff.
One thing I can predict with a fair degree of certainty. It is going to be a choppy ride to the finish line. Don't you just love modern politics?
MORE INTERESTING STUFF FOR SCOTUS THIS TERM
by Bob Walsh
SCOTUS is considering a 47 year old law that requires unanimity in criminal trial verdicts on the federal level, but makes no such requirement on state trials. This case hinges on a ruling from Louisiana where a man is doing life for murder on a 10-2 jury vote. Oregon is the only other state that does not require unanimity in criminal verdicts. Louisiana has changed their law, but the change was not retroactive and only took effect this year.
In another interesting criminal matter the court is likely going to determine whether or not state courts have to allow criminal defendants to use a "not guilty by reason of insanity" defense. Kansas, Idaho, Montana and Utah do not permit an insanity defense at all, and Alaska severely limits its use.
SCOTUS is considering a 47 year old law that requires unanimity in criminal trial verdicts on the federal level, but makes no such requirement on state trials. This case hinges on a ruling from Louisiana where a man is doing life for murder on a 10-2 jury vote. Oregon is the only other state that does not require unanimity in criminal verdicts. Louisiana has changed their law, but the change was not retroactive and only took effect this year.
In another interesting criminal matter the court is likely going to determine whether or not state courts have to allow criminal defendants to use a "not guilty by reason of insanity" defense. Kansas, Idaho, Montana and Utah do not permit an insanity defense at all, and Alaska severely limits its use.
MURDERED KEY WITNESS AGAINST AMBER GUYGER WAS A DOPE DEALER
Amber Guyger witness Joshua Brown was shot dead during 'drug deal gone wrong' in attack unrelated to the killer cop, say police, as they arrest one man, search for two more and reveal the dead man had 12LBS of marijuana in his apartment
Daily Mail
October 8, 2019
Police say Joshua Brown was shot dead by three Louisiana men who were allegedly trying to buy drugs off him just days after he testified during killer cop Amber Guyger's trial.
Thaddeous Charles Green, 22, Michael Diaz Mitchell, 32, and Jacquerious Mitchell, 20, will face capital murder charges in last Friday's killing of the 28-year-old in Dallas, Texas. Police said on Tuesday that the three men had allegedly come to Dallas from Alexandria, which is 330 miles away, to buy marijuana from Brown.
Brown has previously served time for a drug and firearms conviction and has a history of drug charges, DailyMail.com has learned. Following his death, police said they found 12 pounds of marijuana and $4,000 cash in his apartment.
Only one of the suspects in his death, Jacquerious, is currently in police custody. He is in hospital in a 'critical condition' after claiming to have been shot by Brown.
The other two suspects, Green and Michael, remain on the run and are believed to be in Louisiana.
Daily Mail
October 8, 2019
Police say Joshua Brown was shot dead by three Louisiana men who were allegedly trying to buy drugs off him just days after he testified during killer cop Amber Guyger's trial.
Thaddeous Charles Green, 22, Michael Diaz Mitchell, 32, and Jacquerious Mitchell, 20, will face capital murder charges in last Friday's killing of the 28-year-old in Dallas, Texas. Police said on Tuesday that the three men had allegedly come to Dallas from Alexandria, which is 330 miles away, to buy marijuana from Brown.
Brown has previously served time for a drug and firearms conviction and has a history of drug charges, DailyMail.com has learned. Following his death, police said they found 12 pounds of marijuana and $4,000 cash in his apartment.
Only one of the suspects in his death, Jacquerious, is currently in police custody. He is in hospital in a 'critical condition' after claiming to have been shot by Brown.
The other two suspects, Green and Michael, remain on the run and are believed to be in Louisiana.
16-YEAR-0LD GIVES UP AFTER 45-MINUTE STANDOFF WITH SWAT TEAM
Texas City HS student arrested on suspicion in deadly carjackings
By Tulsi Kamath and Brittany Taylor
Click2Houston
October 7, 2019
TEXAS CITY, Texas - A Texas City High School student, 16, has been arrested on suspicion in connection with a deadly carjacking following a standoff with police in La Marque.
What happened?
At about 8:15 p.m. a driver was held at gunpoint near the Metro PCS store in the Mainland Mall Shopping Center. The suspect with a handgun allegedly demanded the keys to the victims' 2002 Honda Odyssey minivan. Police say the victims complied and the suspect drove away in the minivan.
The suspect was described as a young black man between the ages of 17 and 19. He was wearing blue jeans and a white hooded sweatshirt and used a handgun during the carjacking.
The second carjacking turns deadly
Fifteen minutes later, police responded to a robbery and shooting at the Costa Mariposa Apartments at 7555 Medical Center Drive. A 45-year-old Texas City man was found shot and killed by the staircase of a building.
"Witnesses described the suspect as a thin build younger black male approximately 5'10", wearing blue jeans and a white shirt," police wrote in a news release Monday morning. "The suspect was seen leaving in the victim's 2016 white Nissan Maxima displaying Texas temporary license plate 4230U3."
As they investigated, police discovered the Honda Odyssey from the earlier carjacking, parked in the apartment complex. It was taken to the Texas City Police Department for processing and police believe the same person was responsible for both carjackings and the homicide.
The Nissan Altima was found in La Marque at about 7:30 a.m. Monday and was taken to the Texas City Police Department for processing.
The suspect’s arrest
The teen was found hiding underneath a house on Franklin Street near the Gulf Freeway.
Dozens of police officers from several departments, including a SWAT team, and a DPS helicopter and crew were dispatched to the scene.
"After about 45 minutes of talking with our negotiators, he did surrender peacefully," Cp.l Allen Bejerke, of the Texas City Police Department said.
Family of the suspected carjacker
The teen's father and aunt showed up at the scene.
"He's a troubled kid, he's taking medication, but he's been in trouble," the teenager's aunt said.
What’s next?
It was unclear Monday whether the teen would be charged as a juvenile or as an adult but he is the prime suspect in the death of the 45-year-old man who was shot and killed.
The victim remained publicly unidentified Monday because next of kin had yet to be notified, according to Cpl. Bejerke.
By Tulsi Kamath and Brittany Taylor
Click2Houston
October 7, 2019
TEXAS CITY, Texas - A Texas City High School student, 16, has been arrested on suspicion in connection with a deadly carjacking following a standoff with police in La Marque.
What happened?
At about 8:15 p.m. a driver was held at gunpoint near the Metro PCS store in the Mainland Mall Shopping Center. The suspect with a handgun allegedly demanded the keys to the victims' 2002 Honda Odyssey minivan. Police say the victims complied and the suspect drove away in the minivan.
The suspect was described as a young black man between the ages of 17 and 19. He was wearing blue jeans and a white hooded sweatshirt and used a handgun during the carjacking.
The second carjacking turns deadly
Fifteen minutes later, police responded to a robbery and shooting at the Costa Mariposa Apartments at 7555 Medical Center Drive. A 45-year-old Texas City man was found shot and killed by the staircase of a building.
"Witnesses described the suspect as a thin build younger black male approximately 5'10", wearing blue jeans and a white shirt," police wrote in a news release Monday morning. "The suspect was seen leaving in the victim's 2016 white Nissan Maxima displaying Texas temporary license plate 4230U3."
As they investigated, police discovered the Honda Odyssey from the earlier carjacking, parked in the apartment complex. It was taken to the Texas City Police Department for processing and police believe the same person was responsible for both carjackings and the homicide.
The Nissan Altima was found in La Marque at about 7:30 a.m. Monday and was taken to the Texas City Police Department for processing.
The suspect’s arrest
The teen was found hiding underneath a house on Franklin Street near the Gulf Freeway.
Dozens of police officers from several departments, including a SWAT team, and a DPS helicopter and crew were dispatched to the scene.
"After about 45 minutes of talking with our negotiators, he did surrender peacefully," Cp.l Allen Bejerke, of the Texas City Police Department said.
Family of the suspected carjacker
The teen's father and aunt showed up at the scene.
"He's a troubled kid, he's taking medication, but he's been in trouble," the teenager's aunt said.
What’s next?
It was unclear Monday whether the teen would be charged as a juvenile or as an adult but he is the prime suspect in the death of the 45-year-old man who was shot and killed.
The victim remained publicly unidentified Monday because next of kin had yet to be notified, according to Cpl. Bejerke.
HOW IS ILLINOIS GOING TO PUNISH THIS MULTIPLE MURDERER?
9-year-old charged with murder in Illinois fire that killed 5
Associated Press
October 8, 2019
EUREKA, Ill. — A 9-year-old child accused of causing a mobile home fire that killed three children and two adults in central Illinois has been charged with five counts of first-degree murder.
The juvenile also was charged with two counts of arson and one count of aggravated arson, the Peoria Journal Star reported.
The April 6 fire killed a 1-year-old, two 2-year-olds, a 34-year-old man and a 69-year-old woman at the Timberline Mobile Home Park near the village of Goodfield, about 150 miles southwest of Chicago.
Woodford County State’s Attorney Greg Minger would not reveal other details about the suspect, including a possible relationship to the victims.
No child as young as this one has been accused in a mass killing since at least 2006, according to the AP/USATODAY/Northeastern University mass murder database. It tracks all U.S. homicides since then in which four or more people were killed (not including the offender) over a short period of time (24 hours), regardless of weapon, location, victim-offender relationship or motive.
Minger said he scoured multiple reports on the fire before proceeding with the prosecution. Woodford County Coroner Tim Ruestman said the fire was started intentionally.
“It was a heavy decision,” Minger said. “It’s a tragedy, but at the end of the day, it’s charging a very young person with one of the most serious crimes we have. But I just think it needs to be done at this point, for finality.”
A major challenge for prosecutors will be trying to prove the child formed an intent to kill in advance, which is required in first-degree murder cases, explained Gus Kostopoulos, a former prosecutor-turned-juvenile defense lawyer in Chicago.
“Nine-year-olds don’t know that Santa Claus doesn’t exist. They don’t know people die and don’t come back to life,” he said. “I don’t know if 9-year-olds can form intent to commit murder.”
A leading Illinois advocate for children ensnared in the criminal justice system sharply criticized the decision to charge a child that young with murder.
“The charges are completely out of line, given everything we have learned ... especially about the brain development of children,” said Betsy Clark, the president of Juvenile Justice Initiative, based in Evanston, Illinois.
Clark spoke to The Associated Press Tuesday by phone from New York, where she was attending the official release of a United Nations report on the prosecution of children. It recommends that children under 14 should never be prosecuted, no matter the crime.
Clark said 14 is the minimum age of criminal responsibility in many countries, including Germany.
In the 1890s, Illinois became among the first places in the world to establish a juvenile court, thereby taking minors out of the adult system, Clark said. But the case announced this week shows Illinois is no longer on the cutting age of juvenile justice, she said.
“We used to be a world leader and now we are so far behind,” she said.
Charges alleging violent crimes against children are rare, said Clark, adding that she hasn’t heard of other cases in which someone that young was charged with so many killings.
If convicted, the child could be placed on probation for at least five years but not beyond the age of 21, Minger said. Therapy and counseling would be likely.
“Probation, given the age, is about the only outcome that could happen here,” he said.
No arrest warrant is to be issued for the suspect, Minger said. The suspect will be appointed an attorney and will be subject to a bench trial, in front of a judge, he said.
Under Illinois law, a suspect younger than 10 cannot be detained. And a minor is not given a public jury trial and not entitled to one — unless the minor is charged as an adult.
The filing of murder charges against children under 10 is rare but not unprecedented.
Last month, a Michigan judge dismissed a murder charge against a 9-year-old accused of fatally shooting his mother in their home near Sturgis. St. Joseph County Family Division Judge David Tomlinson ruled that, under Michigan law, the boy was presumed incompetent for trial because he’s not yet 10.
“This case disturbs me more than any case I’ve ever dealt with,” the judge said.
Associated Press
October 8, 2019
EUREKA, Ill. — A 9-year-old child accused of causing a mobile home fire that killed three children and two adults in central Illinois has been charged with five counts of first-degree murder.
The juvenile also was charged with two counts of arson and one count of aggravated arson, the Peoria Journal Star reported.
The April 6 fire killed a 1-year-old, two 2-year-olds, a 34-year-old man and a 69-year-old woman at the Timberline Mobile Home Park near the village of Goodfield, about 150 miles southwest of Chicago.
Woodford County State’s Attorney Greg Minger would not reveal other details about the suspect, including a possible relationship to the victims.
No child as young as this one has been accused in a mass killing since at least 2006, according to the AP/USATODAY/Northeastern University mass murder database. It tracks all U.S. homicides since then in which four or more people were killed (not including the offender) over a short period of time (24 hours), regardless of weapon, location, victim-offender relationship or motive.
Minger said he scoured multiple reports on the fire before proceeding with the prosecution. Woodford County Coroner Tim Ruestman said the fire was started intentionally.
“It was a heavy decision,” Minger said. “It’s a tragedy, but at the end of the day, it’s charging a very young person with one of the most serious crimes we have. But I just think it needs to be done at this point, for finality.”
A major challenge for prosecutors will be trying to prove the child formed an intent to kill in advance, which is required in first-degree murder cases, explained Gus Kostopoulos, a former prosecutor-turned-juvenile defense lawyer in Chicago.
“Nine-year-olds don’t know that Santa Claus doesn’t exist. They don’t know people die and don’t come back to life,” he said. “I don’t know if 9-year-olds can form intent to commit murder.”
A leading Illinois advocate for children ensnared in the criminal justice system sharply criticized the decision to charge a child that young with murder.
“The charges are completely out of line, given everything we have learned ... especially about the brain development of children,” said Betsy Clark, the president of Juvenile Justice Initiative, based in Evanston, Illinois.
Clark spoke to The Associated Press Tuesday by phone from New York, where she was attending the official release of a United Nations report on the prosecution of children. It recommends that children under 14 should never be prosecuted, no matter the crime.
Clark said 14 is the minimum age of criminal responsibility in many countries, including Germany.
In the 1890s, Illinois became among the first places in the world to establish a juvenile court, thereby taking minors out of the adult system, Clark said. But the case announced this week shows Illinois is no longer on the cutting age of juvenile justice, she said.
“We used to be a world leader and now we are so far behind,” she said.
Charges alleging violent crimes against children are rare, said Clark, adding that she hasn’t heard of other cases in which someone that young was charged with so many killings.
If convicted, the child could be placed on probation for at least five years but not beyond the age of 21, Minger said. Therapy and counseling would be likely.
“Probation, given the age, is about the only outcome that could happen here,” he said.
No arrest warrant is to be issued for the suspect, Minger said. The suspect will be appointed an attorney and will be subject to a bench trial, in front of a judge, he said.
Under Illinois law, a suspect younger than 10 cannot be detained. And a minor is not given a public jury trial and not entitled to one — unless the minor is charged as an adult.
The filing of murder charges against children under 10 is rare but not unprecedented.
Last month, a Michigan judge dismissed a murder charge against a 9-year-old accused of fatally shooting his mother in their home near Sturgis. St. Joseph County Family Division Judge David Tomlinson ruled that, under Michigan law, the boy was presumed incompetent for trial because he’s not yet 10.
“This case disturbs me more than any case I’ve ever dealt with,” the judge said.
ISRAELI AIR DEFENSES CANNOT WITHSTAND A SWARM ATTACK OF UAVS AND MISSILES
Is Israel Preparing for War With Iran?
Bt Yochanan Visser
Israel Today
October 8, 2019
The Israeli security cabinet met for the first time in two months on Sunday for an emergency meeting on the increasing Iranian threat to the Jewish state.
The meeting took place after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during a speech for the newly inaugurated Knesset, warned that Israel is facing a “huge security challenge” that is increasing every week.
The caretaker PM added that his words should be taken seriously and that he did not just want to scare the public and the media out of political considerations.
Netanyahu then made it clear he was talking about the Iranian threat to Israel and recalled the recent threats against Israel by members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
“Anyone who knows the situation knows that Iran is getting stronger and is attacking around the world, saying clearly, ‘Israel will disappear’,” the Prime Minister said.
Gabi Ashkenazi, a former chief of staff of the IDF and now a member of the Blue and White party who was appointed last week as chairman of the Knesset Committee for Foreign Affairs and Defense later seemed to agree with Netanyahu’s statement.
He said last Thursday that Israel is confronted with “many security challenges” while adding that some of them are not visible to the public.
Avigdor Liberman, a former defense minister and leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, even spoke of a “national emergency” and urged Netanyahu’s Likud party and Benny Gantz, the leader of the Blue and White Party, to form a national unity government now.
Israel is currently facing “security threats from south, north and further away,” Liberman said on Saturday, adding that this is not the time for political games while he urged other party leaders to set aside their egos.
The Yisrael Beiteinu leader also seemed to allude to a repeat of the Yom Kippur war scenario when various Arab armies carried out an almost fatal surprise attack on Israel.
Concerns in Israel about an Iranian attack have only increased after the IRGC carried out a carefully planned attack on vital oil installations in Saudi Arabia last September.
That attack was carried out with a swarm of attack-drones (UAVs) and cruise missiles which Iran developed with the help of North Korea.
The attack on Saudi Arabia showed that the billions of dollars that the Kingdom spent on defense, and in particular on air defenses didn’t affect the capabilities of the IRGC.
Israeli government officials are now warning that Israel’s air defenses are insufficient as well to withstand a large-scale attack with UAVs and missiles.
One of them spoke to the Al-Monitor news site and suggested that the various Israeli anti-missile shields and other air defenses could not be effective enough to prevent the Iranians from causing substantial damage to vital infrastructure in Israel.
Israel is in the possession of several anti-missile shields.
The Iron Dome shield is often used because both Hamas and Islamic Jihad have a large number of short-range missiles.
Then there is David’s Sling which is designed for downing medium-range missiles but has been used only once so far.
Israel also has the Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 two anti-missile systems which have the ability to intercept long-range and even intercontinental missiles as well as the capacity of removing satellites from space (Arrow 3).
Finally, Israel also has the Patriot system that downed an Iranian rocket in May 2018 above the city of Safed in the north of the country but which proved to be ineffective during the first Gulf War in 1991 when Saudi Arabia was attacked by Iraqi Scud rockets.
The problem with these missile defense systems is that in the event that Iran and its proxies are going to use swarm tactics in a future missile war with Israel, they will fail to down every incoming rocket. Islamic Jihad proved that earlier in November 2018 when it fired rocket barrages at the Israeli cities around Gaza and Hamas did the same during the third Gaza War in 2014.
The use of anti-missile systems is also very expensive when compared to the price of the crude rockets which the Iranian proxies use and could disrupt the Israeli economy in a long-term conflict.
It is for this reason that some defense experts in Israel are now calling for the renewed development of the Iron Beam laser cannon which can also be used against incoming rockets.
Commentators in Israel think Iran could now be preparing for an all-out war against Israel after the regime in Tehran claimed Israel and Saudi Arabia tried to assassinate the commander of the Quds Force of the IRGC, Qassem Soleimani.
Soleimani is the architect of Iran’s imperialist policy and oversaw almost every major battle in the wars that have been raging in Iraq and Syria since 2011 and was responsible for building a broad coalition of terrorist groups against Israel.
The Iranian general is generally regarded as a strategic genius and was also responsible for the recent rapprochement between Palestinian terror movements in Gaza and Iran.
Iranian media reported last week that a terrorist cell had been arrested which detonated a huge bomb in a mosque named for Soleimani’s father on the first anniversary of his death.
Prime Minister Netanyahu recently warned Soleimani that he could become a target and claimed that Israel knows where he is and what he’s doing.
Soleimani, in turn, last year warned Israel and the United States last year that Iran has become a world leader in asymmetrical warfare.
The latter is undoubtedly true and this fact compensates for the weakness of the Iranian army which has mostly outdated weapons and combat aircraft at it’s disposal.
In terms of UAV and missile development, however, Iran is a very progressive military force as the recent attack on Saudi Arabia and the shooting of an expensive American UAV over the Persian Gulf showed.
Hossein Salami, the new commander of the IRGC last week claimed that “the Zionist regime no longer poses a threat” and warned Israel that in “any new war will erase the (Zionist) regime from the political geography of the world.”
Bt Yochanan Visser
Israel Today
October 8, 2019
The Israeli security cabinet met for the first time in two months on Sunday for an emergency meeting on the increasing Iranian threat to the Jewish state.
The meeting took place after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during a speech for the newly inaugurated Knesset, warned that Israel is facing a “huge security challenge” that is increasing every week.
The caretaker PM added that his words should be taken seriously and that he did not just want to scare the public and the media out of political considerations.
Netanyahu then made it clear he was talking about the Iranian threat to Israel and recalled the recent threats against Israel by members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
“Anyone who knows the situation knows that Iran is getting stronger and is attacking around the world, saying clearly, ‘Israel will disappear’,” the Prime Minister said.
Gabi Ashkenazi, a former chief of staff of the IDF and now a member of the Blue and White party who was appointed last week as chairman of the Knesset Committee for Foreign Affairs and Defense later seemed to agree with Netanyahu’s statement.
He said last Thursday that Israel is confronted with “many security challenges” while adding that some of them are not visible to the public.
Avigdor Liberman, a former defense minister and leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, even spoke of a “national emergency” and urged Netanyahu’s Likud party and Benny Gantz, the leader of the Blue and White Party, to form a national unity government now.
Israel is currently facing “security threats from south, north and further away,” Liberman said on Saturday, adding that this is not the time for political games while he urged other party leaders to set aside their egos.
The Yisrael Beiteinu leader also seemed to allude to a repeat of the Yom Kippur war scenario when various Arab armies carried out an almost fatal surprise attack on Israel.
Concerns in Israel about an Iranian attack have only increased after the IRGC carried out a carefully planned attack on vital oil installations in Saudi Arabia last September.
That attack was carried out with a swarm of attack-drones (UAVs) and cruise missiles which Iran developed with the help of North Korea.
The attack on Saudi Arabia showed that the billions of dollars that the Kingdom spent on defense, and in particular on air defenses didn’t affect the capabilities of the IRGC.
Israeli government officials are now warning that Israel’s air defenses are insufficient as well to withstand a large-scale attack with UAVs and missiles.
One of them spoke to the Al-Monitor news site and suggested that the various Israeli anti-missile shields and other air defenses could not be effective enough to prevent the Iranians from causing substantial damage to vital infrastructure in Israel.
Israel is in the possession of several anti-missile shields.
The Iron Dome shield is often used because both Hamas and Islamic Jihad have a large number of short-range missiles.
Then there is David’s Sling which is designed for downing medium-range missiles but has been used only once so far.
Israel also has the Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 two anti-missile systems which have the ability to intercept long-range and even intercontinental missiles as well as the capacity of removing satellites from space (Arrow 3).
Finally, Israel also has the Patriot system that downed an Iranian rocket in May 2018 above the city of Safed in the north of the country but which proved to be ineffective during the first Gulf War in 1991 when Saudi Arabia was attacked by Iraqi Scud rockets.
The problem with these missile defense systems is that in the event that Iran and its proxies are going to use swarm tactics in a future missile war with Israel, they will fail to down every incoming rocket. Islamic Jihad proved that earlier in November 2018 when it fired rocket barrages at the Israeli cities around Gaza and Hamas did the same during the third Gaza War in 2014.
The use of anti-missile systems is also very expensive when compared to the price of the crude rockets which the Iranian proxies use and could disrupt the Israeli economy in a long-term conflict.
It is for this reason that some defense experts in Israel are now calling for the renewed development of the Iron Beam laser cannon which can also be used against incoming rockets.
Commentators in Israel think Iran could now be preparing for an all-out war against Israel after the regime in Tehran claimed Israel and Saudi Arabia tried to assassinate the commander of the Quds Force of the IRGC, Qassem Soleimani.
Soleimani is the architect of Iran’s imperialist policy and oversaw almost every major battle in the wars that have been raging in Iraq and Syria since 2011 and was responsible for building a broad coalition of terrorist groups against Israel.
The Iranian general is generally regarded as a strategic genius and was also responsible for the recent rapprochement between Palestinian terror movements in Gaza and Iran.
Iranian media reported last week that a terrorist cell had been arrested which detonated a huge bomb in a mosque named for Soleimani’s father on the first anniversary of his death.
Prime Minister Netanyahu recently warned Soleimani that he could become a target and claimed that Israel knows where he is and what he’s doing.
Soleimani, in turn, last year warned Israel and the United States last year that Iran has become a world leader in asymmetrical warfare.
The latter is undoubtedly true and this fact compensates for the weakness of the Iranian army which has mostly outdated weapons and combat aircraft at it’s disposal.
In terms of UAV and missile development, however, Iran is a very progressive military force as the recent attack on Saudi Arabia and the shooting of an expensive American UAV over the Persian Gulf showed.
Hossein Salami, the new commander of the IRGC last week claimed that “the Zionist regime no longer poses a threat” and warned Israel that in “any new war will erase the (Zionist) regime from the political geography of the world.”
THE SECRET TRANSCRIPTS OF THE YOM KIPPUR WAR
Released by the Defense Ministry for the first time, transcripts of conversations between Israel's top generals reveal the true chaos of the early days of the war, and how Israel planned to defeat Syria by bombing Damascus
By Assaf Golan and Hanan Greenwood
Israel Hayom
October 8, 2019
Forty-six years after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, dramatic transcripts from the first days of the war, including plans for a massive attack on major cities in Arab countries, have been declassified.
The documents, with many sections still redacted, were released for publication on Monday by the Defense Ministry's IDF Archives. The declassified sections reveal details about plans for an attack that would be lethal and change the rules of the game.
In one section, then-IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. David (Dado) Elazar tells then-Maj. Gen. Rehavam Zeevi, "I have two moves. The first is to destroy Syria. There will be an outcry from the world [redacted], but as a first step, let's break one."
Zeevi responds: "Whatever hurts."
Most of what Elazar said next is still redacted, but two words have been authorized for publication: "4 cities," a hint at the targets of the attack.
Elazar said, "I want a dramatic turning point. I want someone to cry, 'Gevald!' Peoples are being wiped out, hold your fire, we'll all cease fire. We're in a catastrophe. If what I said is dramatic and stops the shooting – fine. It [will] stop Syria."
Documentation of a different discussion reveals a bit more while still concealing much of what took place in those early chaotic days.
Then-deputy chief of staff Maj. Gen. Israel (Talik) Tal, discusses bombing Damascus: "I know that we haven't agreed finally, it's too serious and fateful a matter either way. I don't accept the assumption about the effects that would break the enemy. That is to say, if I were 100% certain [redacted], I would say, 'Let's go.' It's possible this might not solve anything, and our situation would be a million times worse. I'm not sure that bombing Damascus will give us a ceasefire than not [bombing] Damascus."
In the same meeting, Tal suggests that Israel retreat from part of the Sinai Desert to concentrate its efforts on the northern front and in battles to check Syria.
"My operative proposal is to hold the Golan Heights steady with the ground forces and use the air force to help thwart [the Syrians]. Not desperate assistance, well-considered assistance in bad circumstances. In Egypt we need to fight wisely to hold them off," he says.
"I'm not saying it's impossible there, and [we could] use the air force to destroy tanks in those areas so that we could have a lot of forces here. We aren't using armor properly here, because we're doing things under pressure," Tal says.
One of the better-known quotes from the Yom Kippur War was uttered by then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, who voiced concern about the possible "destruction of the Third Temple [meaning the state of Israel]." The newly-declassified transcripts show just how pessimistic Dayan was.
On Oct. 7, 1973, 24 hours after the war broke out, Dayan is recorded saying, "What am I afraid of more than anything, in my heart? That the state of Israel will eventually be left without enough weapons to defend itself. It doesn't matter where the line is, there won't be enough tanks or planes and not enough people or well-enough trained people to defend the Land of Israel. In the end, no one will fight this war for us, and all the Arabs will swoop down on us from all sides. I want to tell that to Golda [Meir]."
That same day, the generals spoke among themselves. "At [the airport] Sde Dov, Moshe was talking to me about losing the Third Temple. He was very hoarse, it was painful to hear him. He was talking about a battle for the Land of Israel," Zeevi says.
Elazar replies that Dayan was in no way exaggerating: "This, friends, this is truly a battle for the Land of Israel."
Zeevi goes on to say that he believes that the southern Golan Heights had already fallen: "Maybe I'm being subjective because he [Dan Lener, a division commander] … told me this morning that the fighting in the southern Golan was over, and we lost."
In yet another discussion, Dayan does not keep the seriousness of the situation a secret.
"Anyone who still hasn't gotten a shock will get it now. We're at the number of tanks we had in the [1967] Six-Day War. This Hermon cost us 70 men once and 30 casualties and 70 wounded a second time, and that will destroy the people's morale … This is terrible, we need to make sure they're out of there and attack, and whoever is killed is killed…"
'If Jordan comes in, we're lost'
The senior commanders spend much time discussing what tactics can be employed to stop the advancing Syrians and Egyptians.
"Our situation is bad, very bad," Elazar says in a talk with his deputy. "I've said repeatedly [about] Moshe [Dayan's] option of starting to fold and withdraw – we can always do that. My plan is to try and break [them], at one point and possibly two. That might work, or it might not."
"Jordan is just about to come in. If we [redacted] Damascus, who knows what will happen if Jordan joins [the war]. If Jordan does, then we're lost. That's Jerusalem, 30 km, 400 tanks. Then the air force in Amman, another push by the air force [redacted] ... In Damascus economic targets go immediately, and if the air force goes to those divisions we'll see what happens," the chief of staff says.
Elazar orders then-GOC Northern Command Yitzhak Hofi: "You don't move from the ceasefire line. What will be will be, and I don't intend for us to retreat from there. We won't retreat. I'm coming up with a proposal to do all sorts of things in Syria that you were talking about yesterday because we're approaching a situation in which we must break Syria soon. I want Syria to want a ceasefire today."
'Call up children and the elderly'
On Oct. 9, two days into the fighting in the Gaza Strip, the General Staff already knew how grim things were. Dayan had made it clear to the generals that the Golan Heights must be defended "to the last man."
"If we need to switch the GOC to do that, we need to decide whether we will or not. This needs to be an order. We will bring in the armored forces, but we'll do so to finish off the Syrians' tanks. No matter what, there will be no retreat from that line. Not a single centimeter," Dayan says.
Dayan also makes unprecedented proposals to meet the lack of manpower caused by the many casualties and injured. "We need to look into the possibility of conscripting all those we release when the young people and reserves were enlisted – bring them into the tanks, the air, whatever is needed. We'll get tanks, and there won't be people. Take the older people we've released, and take the younger ones who haven't enlisted, from age 17. We need to … look into the feasibility of enlisting Jews from all over the world – Americans, British, South Africans, anyone who wants to. And if any of them have [military] professions – pilots, tank drivers."
Dayan has harsh criticism for the government and then-Prime Minister Golda Meir and suggests alternatives that she had not approved.
"The government has a different approach and a different spirit. I will have an obligation to you, to ourselves, to the army and to the people to say what I think needs to be done and we haven't done…. When I told Golda she was in shock – first, they don't know the facts, and second, some of them don't understand the facts and the military interpretation of the situation," he says.
Worry that mothers might 'invade' battlefield cemeteries
The senior commanders were dealing not only with immense difficulties on the battlefield, but with the need to keep the homefront from collapse. At one point, Elazar talks with the commander of the IDF Manpower Division Maj. Gen. Herzl Shafir how best to deal with the hundreds of casualties who had been given hasty battlefield burials, and that some of them were unidentified.
"I'm not telling the families of the casualties until Sunday … after that, we need to consider it," Shafir tells Elazar.
"We need to understand that we are burying everyone in temporary graves. There are no funerals. The problem we will face is how to tell the families. They'll want to come see the cemeteries, and we can arrange that," Shafir points out.
Elazar answers: "If we don't notify [them], we'll be invaded by mothers. They'll start walking around and looking at signs for names. Before you do anything, post a guard so they won't get in there."
A conversation between Elazar, Tal, and then-IDF Spokesman Col. Pinchas Lahav deals with how to present the difficult situation in the north and the south, especially given the plans to bomb Damascus.
Lahav says, "We wanted a scare reaction and to create a picture … we can hold off on that."
Tal responds: "Clear skies … and Arabs screaming as Damascus is bombed. It's no good for getting us Phantoms [referring to the air convoy from the US to Israel in which aircraft and weapons were being transferred]."
Lahav suggests framing what was taking place to avoid dramatic headlines: "Not lie about the facts, but we can lie in technique."
Elazar then asks Lahav if he had been too optimistic a day prior to the discussion, and Lahav answers in the affirmative: "Yes, I told you to be optimistic, because I think that if we make it out of this, the people of Israel will forgive you. The spokesman is a weapon. The defense minister, with all due respect, is rigid in his thinking."
Lahav was to be mistaken – after the war, Elazar was the target of extensive criticism for his handling of it as chief of staff.
Some of the transcripts deal with the internecine battles between the generals themselves. Elazar attacks how then-Mag. Gen. Ariel Sharon [who would go on to become prime minister] was handing the southern front, saying his tactics approached the level of a "war crime."
"I didn't say anything … as an order and today he, against orders, went all the way to the water, fought a major battle against orders, lied to [GOC Southern Command Shmuel] Gorodish [Gonen], and when I listen to him on the radio, I see he's lying to me. And now he wants permission to cross to the other side."
In still another conversation, one of the most sensitive of the war, Elazar informs Gorodish that he is to be replaced by former Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev.
"Worse solutions for you could have been found. This is a test of how much you trust me, that I'm trying to find a solution that is least harmful to you. You will remain GOC Southern Command, and Haim Bar-Lev will come down and be at your side. If you accept it with good grace, it will be an excellent solution," Elazar encourages him.
"You need to take it well, Shmulik. When we're down or when the war is over, you'll understand. There are [different] dimensions to this war. Shmulik, I want you to accept it. Trust me, that I'm doing my best for everyone in the circumstances. Take it in good spirit, but he is the commander and you'll work with him as such."
By Assaf Golan and Hanan Greenwood
Israel Hayom
October 8, 2019
Forty-six years after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, dramatic transcripts from the first days of the war, including plans for a massive attack on major cities in Arab countries, have been declassified.
The documents, with many sections still redacted, were released for publication on Monday by the Defense Ministry's IDF Archives. The declassified sections reveal details about plans for an attack that would be lethal and change the rules of the game.
In one section, then-IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. David (Dado) Elazar tells then-Maj. Gen. Rehavam Zeevi, "I have two moves. The first is to destroy Syria. There will be an outcry from the world [redacted], but as a first step, let's break one."
Zeevi responds: "Whatever hurts."
Most of what Elazar said next is still redacted, but two words have been authorized for publication: "4 cities," a hint at the targets of the attack.
Elazar said, "I want a dramatic turning point. I want someone to cry, 'Gevald!' Peoples are being wiped out, hold your fire, we'll all cease fire. We're in a catastrophe. If what I said is dramatic and stops the shooting – fine. It [will] stop Syria."
Documentation of a different discussion reveals a bit more while still concealing much of what took place in those early chaotic days.
Then-deputy chief of staff Maj. Gen. Israel (Talik) Tal, discusses bombing Damascus: "I know that we haven't agreed finally, it's too serious and fateful a matter either way. I don't accept the assumption about the effects that would break the enemy. That is to say, if I were 100% certain [redacted], I would say, 'Let's go.' It's possible this might not solve anything, and our situation would be a million times worse. I'm not sure that bombing Damascus will give us a ceasefire than not [bombing] Damascus."
In the same meeting, Tal suggests that Israel retreat from part of the Sinai Desert to concentrate its efforts on the northern front and in battles to check Syria.
"My operative proposal is to hold the Golan Heights steady with the ground forces and use the air force to help thwart [the Syrians]. Not desperate assistance, well-considered assistance in bad circumstances. In Egypt we need to fight wisely to hold them off," he says.
"I'm not saying it's impossible there, and [we could] use the air force to destroy tanks in those areas so that we could have a lot of forces here. We aren't using armor properly here, because we're doing things under pressure," Tal says.
One of the better-known quotes from the Yom Kippur War was uttered by then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, who voiced concern about the possible "destruction of the Third Temple [meaning the state of Israel]." The newly-declassified transcripts show just how pessimistic Dayan was.
On Oct. 7, 1973, 24 hours after the war broke out, Dayan is recorded saying, "What am I afraid of more than anything, in my heart? That the state of Israel will eventually be left without enough weapons to defend itself. It doesn't matter where the line is, there won't be enough tanks or planes and not enough people or well-enough trained people to defend the Land of Israel. In the end, no one will fight this war for us, and all the Arabs will swoop down on us from all sides. I want to tell that to Golda [Meir]."
That same day, the generals spoke among themselves. "At [the airport] Sde Dov, Moshe was talking to me about losing the Third Temple. He was very hoarse, it was painful to hear him. He was talking about a battle for the Land of Israel," Zeevi says.
Elazar replies that Dayan was in no way exaggerating: "This, friends, this is truly a battle for the Land of Israel."
Zeevi goes on to say that he believes that the southern Golan Heights had already fallen: "Maybe I'm being subjective because he [Dan Lener, a division commander] … told me this morning that the fighting in the southern Golan was over, and we lost."
In yet another discussion, Dayan does not keep the seriousness of the situation a secret.
"Anyone who still hasn't gotten a shock will get it now. We're at the number of tanks we had in the [1967] Six-Day War. This Hermon cost us 70 men once and 30 casualties and 70 wounded a second time, and that will destroy the people's morale … This is terrible, we need to make sure they're out of there and attack, and whoever is killed is killed…"
'If Jordan comes in, we're lost'
The senior commanders spend much time discussing what tactics can be employed to stop the advancing Syrians and Egyptians.
"Our situation is bad, very bad," Elazar says in a talk with his deputy. "I've said repeatedly [about] Moshe [Dayan's] option of starting to fold and withdraw – we can always do that. My plan is to try and break [them], at one point and possibly two. That might work, or it might not."
"Jordan is just about to come in. If we [redacted] Damascus, who knows what will happen if Jordan joins [the war]. If Jordan does, then we're lost. That's Jerusalem, 30 km, 400 tanks. Then the air force in Amman, another push by the air force [redacted] ... In Damascus economic targets go immediately, and if the air force goes to those divisions we'll see what happens," the chief of staff says.
Elazar orders then-GOC Northern Command Yitzhak Hofi: "You don't move from the ceasefire line. What will be will be, and I don't intend for us to retreat from there. We won't retreat. I'm coming up with a proposal to do all sorts of things in Syria that you were talking about yesterday because we're approaching a situation in which we must break Syria soon. I want Syria to want a ceasefire today."
'Call up children and the elderly'
On Oct. 9, two days into the fighting in the Gaza Strip, the General Staff already knew how grim things were. Dayan had made it clear to the generals that the Golan Heights must be defended "to the last man."
"If we need to switch the GOC to do that, we need to decide whether we will or not. This needs to be an order. We will bring in the armored forces, but we'll do so to finish off the Syrians' tanks. No matter what, there will be no retreat from that line. Not a single centimeter," Dayan says.
Dayan also makes unprecedented proposals to meet the lack of manpower caused by the many casualties and injured. "We need to look into the possibility of conscripting all those we release when the young people and reserves were enlisted – bring them into the tanks, the air, whatever is needed. We'll get tanks, and there won't be people. Take the older people we've released, and take the younger ones who haven't enlisted, from age 17. We need to … look into the feasibility of enlisting Jews from all over the world – Americans, British, South Africans, anyone who wants to. And if any of them have [military] professions – pilots, tank drivers."
Dayan has harsh criticism for the government and then-Prime Minister Golda Meir and suggests alternatives that she had not approved.
"The government has a different approach and a different spirit. I will have an obligation to you, to ourselves, to the army and to the people to say what I think needs to be done and we haven't done…. When I told Golda she was in shock – first, they don't know the facts, and second, some of them don't understand the facts and the military interpretation of the situation," he says.
Worry that mothers might 'invade' battlefield cemeteries
The senior commanders were dealing not only with immense difficulties on the battlefield, but with the need to keep the homefront from collapse. At one point, Elazar talks with the commander of the IDF Manpower Division Maj. Gen. Herzl Shafir how best to deal with the hundreds of casualties who had been given hasty battlefield burials, and that some of them were unidentified.
"I'm not telling the families of the casualties until Sunday … after that, we need to consider it," Shafir tells Elazar.
"We need to understand that we are burying everyone in temporary graves. There are no funerals. The problem we will face is how to tell the families. They'll want to come see the cemeteries, and we can arrange that," Shafir points out.
Elazar answers: "If we don't notify [them], we'll be invaded by mothers. They'll start walking around and looking at signs for names. Before you do anything, post a guard so they won't get in there."
A conversation between Elazar, Tal, and then-IDF Spokesman Col. Pinchas Lahav deals with how to present the difficult situation in the north and the south, especially given the plans to bomb Damascus.
Lahav says, "We wanted a scare reaction and to create a picture … we can hold off on that."
Tal responds: "Clear skies … and Arabs screaming as Damascus is bombed. It's no good for getting us Phantoms [referring to the air convoy from the US to Israel in which aircraft and weapons were being transferred]."
Lahav suggests framing what was taking place to avoid dramatic headlines: "Not lie about the facts, but we can lie in technique."
Elazar then asks Lahav if he had been too optimistic a day prior to the discussion, and Lahav answers in the affirmative: "Yes, I told you to be optimistic, because I think that if we make it out of this, the people of Israel will forgive you. The spokesman is a weapon. The defense minister, with all due respect, is rigid in his thinking."
Lahav was to be mistaken – after the war, Elazar was the target of extensive criticism for his handling of it as chief of staff.
Some of the transcripts deal with the internecine battles between the generals themselves. Elazar attacks how then-Mag. Gen. Ariel Sharon [who would go on to become prime minister] was handing the southern front, saying his tactics approached the level of a "war crime."
"I didn't say anything … as an order and today he, against orders, went all the way to the water, fought a major battle against orders, lied to [GOC Southern Command Shmuel] Gorodish [Gonen], and when I listen to him on the radio, I see he's lying to me. And now he wants permission to cross to the other side."
In still another conversation, one of the most sensitive of the war, Elazar informs Gorodish that he is to be replaced by former Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev.
"Worse solutions for you could have been found. This is a test of how much you trust me, that I'm trying to find a solution that is least harmful to you. You will remain GOC Southern Command, and Haim Bar-Lev will come down and be at your side. If you accept it with good grace, it will be an excellent solution," Elazar encourages him.
"You need to take it well, Shmulik. When we're down or when the war is over, you'll understand. There are [different] dimensions to this war. Shmulik, I want you to accept it. Trust me, that I'm doing my best for everyone in the circumstances. Take it in good spirit, but he is the commander and you'll work with him as such."
Tuesday, October 08, 2019
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