Berserk Thai sergeant major is SHOT DEAD by security forces after killing his commanding officer and a fellow soldier over a financial dispute then shooting at least 19 at shopping mall while posting selfies on Facebook
Sergeant Major Jakrapanth Thomma went on a killing spree in Korat, 155 miles from Thai capital Bangkok
Thomma hijacked an army vehicle, shot an officer and soldiers, and sprayed a volley of bullets at civilians
He’s then believed to have taken hostages at a shopping centre that Thai forces later tonight laid siege to
Rogue soldier was shot by Thai security forces after holing himself up in a basement for more than 14 hours
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/i-thought-i-was-smarter-than-almost-everybody-my-double-life-as-a-kgb-agent?utm_source=pocket-newtab
On a chilly morning in December 1988, computer analyst Jack Barsky embarked on his usual morning commute to his office on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, leaving his wife and baby daughter at home in Queens. As he entered the subway, he caught sight of something startling: a daub of red paint on a metal beam. Barsky had looked for it every morning for years; it meant he had a life-changing decision to make, and fast.
Barsky knew the drill. The red paint was a warning that he was in immediate danger, that he should hurry to collect cash and emergency documents from a prearranged drop site. From there, he would cross the border into Canada and contact the Soviet consulate in Toronto. Arrangements would be made for him to leave the country. He would cease to be Jack Barsky. The American identity he had inhabited for a decade would evaporate and he would return to his former life: that of Albrecht Dittrich, a chemist and KGB agent, with a wife and seven-year-old son waiting patiently for him in East Germany.
Barsky thought of his American daughter, Chelsea: could he really leave her? And, if he didn’t, how long could he evade both the KGB and US counterintelligence?
***
On an unseasonably warm afternoon in January 2017, Barsky strides into my hotel in Atlanta, Georgia and gives me a firm handshake. At 67, he has lived a more or less ordinary life for the past three decades. But the years spent undercover were hard on him and the people close to him. Only recently has he been able to come clean about his past. His late coming out has provided an overwhelming sense of release, Barsky says. “All those years, I had a little man up here,” he says, pointing to the sandy hair swept across his scalp in a side parting. “He would constantly watch what I was saying, and stop me from going into certain territory. And then the little man got killed off, and it was like an explosion.” These days, he is a garrulous conversationalist who requires little prodding.
Barsky’s story is a timely reminder of the immense resources the Russians were willing to expend during the cold war in their bid to embed agents in enemy territory. Hacking was not an option, and casual travel between Moscow and the west was much harder. “As I’m talking about this stuff, it feels unreal,” he says of his convoluted journey from East Germany to the US. “It feels as if it wasn’t me. But it was.”
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/dems-dont-realize-how-much-impeachment-hurts-them/?utm_source=ntnlreview&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=amconswap
Would you trust the nation to the people the Democratic party has become? Because that is the question Democrats have thrust into the minds of voters. As they have said many times, this was always more about America than it was about Trump.
We are watching the pathetic ending to one of the most pathetic periods in American politics. All the smoking guns have been firing blanks.
Following one of the most childish tantrums of denial ever recorded, Democrats set about destroying the Trump presidency in its crib; a WaPo headline from January 20, 2017 – Inauguration Day itself – exclaimed “The Campaign to Impeach President Trump has Begun.” The opening gambit was going to be Emoluments, including rent paid by the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China for its space in Trump Tower in New York.
After three years, it looks like that attempt finally reached its end game, failure, one gray afternoon. On Friday the Senate brought impeachment proceedings to their effective conclusion, declaring the witnesses already called before the House were to be the last. The formal vote to acquit Trump is scheduled as an anti-climax for Wednesday.
It has been ugly and mean. Using the entire apparatus of the American intelligence community, operating fully outside the law, Democrats declared the President of the United States a Russian spy. They forced gentlemen to explain to their elderly mothers what a pee tape was. We had to hear over dinner about Trump’s sexual peccadilloes and look deeper into Stormy Daniel’s cleavage than our own political souls. They made expedient heroes out of small, dishonest men like Michael Avenatti, John Brennan, and James Comey for perceived political gain.
Shame on you, Democrats.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/victoria-woodhull-first-woman-presidential-candidate/
S he was the first woman to run for president, the first to address a congressional committee, and the first to own a brokerage on Wall Street. She was also a con artist, a gold digger, and a scandal magnet. When she ran for president in 1872, she sat out Election Day in a Manhattan jail, arrested on charges of obscenity. Victoria Woodhull was unquestionably a pioneer in women’s rights, yet her legacy is so messy and complicated that she remains an outlier in feminist history.
She was born Victoria Claflin in 1838, into a squalidly poor family in Homer, Ohio, a tiny frontier hamlet. Her sister Tennessee (called Tennie C or just Tennie) came along seven years later, and a third sister, Utica, after her. In all there were ten Claflin kids, seven of whom survived into adulthood.
Their father, Buck Claflin, was a con man who sold patent medicine as “the King of Cancers.” Their mother, Roxana, was an Evangelical Christian who spoke in tongues and ranted fire and brimstone at the neighbors. Victoria and Tennessee were still children when Buck had them out performing as spirit mediums and faith healers. Victoria was a dark, ethereal beauty, and almost spookily serious. She would claim to have visions of Jesus and Satan, and to receive advice from spirit guides who included Demosthenes, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and Juliet. Utica and Tennie were simpler types. Utica became an alcoholic and drug addict. Tennie was blonde, bubbly, and carnal. All three would use sex to get what they needed from men. But with Victoria everything had to be taken to a higher level. She didn’t just want men to desire her and give her money; she wanted them to admire, respect, and even adore her. She’d say or do almost anything to get that from them, and she was good at it. Men didn’t just fall in love with her, they fell in worship of her.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/why-rush-limbaugh-matters/
Florida governor Ron DeSantis spoke to Rush Limbaugh last fall at a gala dinner for the National Review Institute. The radio host was there to receive the William F. Buckley Jr. award. “He actually gave me one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever had,” Limbaugh told his audience the next day. “He listed five great conservatives and put me in the list.” DeSantis’s pantheon: William F. Buckley Jr., Ronald Reagan, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Limbaugh.
Good list. No media figure since Buckley has had a more lasting influence on American conservatism than Limbaugh, whose cumulative weekly audience is more than 20 million people. Since national syndication in 1988, Limbaugh has been the voice of conservatism, his three-hour program blending news, politics, and entertainment in a powerful and polarizing cocktail. His shocking announcement this week that he has advanced lung cancer, and his appearance at the State of the Union, where President Trump awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, are occasions to reflect on his impact.
It’s one thing to excel in your field. It’s another to create the field in which you excel. Conservative talk radio was local and niche before Limbaugh. He was the first to capitalize on regulatory and technological changes that allowed for national scale. The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 freed affiliates to air controversial political opinions without inviting government scrutiny. As music programming migrated to the FM spectrum, AM bandwidth welcomed talk. Listener participation was also critical. “It was not until 1982,” writes Nicole Hemmer in Messengers of the Right, “that AT&T introduced the modern direct-dial toll-free calling system that national call-in shows use.”
https://pjmedia.com/trending/donald-trumps-huge-incredible-amazing-very-good-week/
Make no mistake about: President Trump has had a great week, and the Democrats had a lousy one. Not even the liberal media denies it. “Donald Trump is having a week that’s frustrating a lot of Democrats,” CNN’s Jake Tapper conceded as early as Tuesday. And he wasn’t the only one who noticed. “Democrats are reduced to hoping the president’s luck finally runs out,” wrote The Week’s Damon Linker. “It’s been a pretty good week for Donald Trump,” wrote David Graham of The Atlantic. “In fact, it’s hard to think of a better week in the Trump administration.”
“Republicans say Donald Trump had perhaps the best week of his presidency, nine months before the election. And even some Democrats privately agree with that assessment,” wrote Scott Wong of The Hill.
Should Trump be re-elected in November, it’s no stretch of the imagination to predict that many pundits will point this past week as the moment his re-election became inevitable.
Let’s review what happened this week, and why Team Trump should be celebrating.
Monday
Trump’s tremendous week was foreshadowed by the disaster that became of the Democratic Iowa caucuses. Bernie Sanders came in with momentum and all eyes were on the Hawkeye State to see who would actually emerge victorious, as the caucuses have typically predicted which candidate will ultimately win the Democratic Party’s nomination.
Instead, results were delayed… and delayed… and delayed some more. Something went wrong, horribly wrong, which was traced back to problems with an app that was developed specifically for the caucuses to report results, prompting accusations of shenanigans designed to hurt Bernie Sanders and prevent him from declaring victory Monday evening.
Results wouldn’t come in until later in the week, and reports of errors in the numbers only added fuel to the fire that the Democratic Party is run by corrupt and incompetent people.
Worse yet, turnout for the Democrat caucuses was lower than expected, matching 2016 levels, as opposed to 2008 levels. Meanwhile, Trump broke a record for the most votes for an incumbent president in the Iowa caucuses.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/prada-and-the-new-fashion-police-11581120144?mod=opinion_lead_pos3
Move over, Anna Wintour. New York City regulators now have the final say over what constitutes a fashion faux pas. This week the city’s Commission on Human Rights announced a sweeping settlement with Prada over some of its designs, and the terms threaten artistic expression across the industry.
The brouhaha began in December 2018 when Chinyere Ezie, a lawyer at a social-justice nonprofit, discovered Prada’s Pradamalia collection. Prada described its bag charms, figurines and other trinkets as “a new family of mysterious tiny creatures that are one part biological, one part technological, all parts Prada.” Ms. Ezie instead saw “blackface imagery” and “Sambo like imagery,” she wrote in a Facebook post that went viral.
Within days, Prada pulled the merchandise and said it “never had the intention of offending anyone and we abhor all forms of racism and racist imagery.” Ms. Ezie still filed a complaint. In this week’s settlement Prada denies engaging in unlawful discriminatory practices. Yet the agreement gives New York City bureaucrats broad influence over the fashion house’s day-to-day operations, including its creative process, training and hiring.
Prada now must appoint a diversity and inclusion officer who can review all of “Prada’s designs before they are sold, advertised or promoted in any way in the United States.” The diversity cop will ensure that “Prada’s activities, including, without limitation, its production, advertising, and business activities, are conducted in a racially equitable manner.”
https://spectator.org/saving-private-ciaramella/
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains,
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
— Rudyard Kipling, “The Young British Soldier”
So it’s over. The impeachment of President Trump, the latest and by no means last installment in the Democrats’ deranged and all-consuming effort to disenfranchise the 63 million unenlightened, Untermenschen Americans who had the bad taste not to vote for Hillary Clinton, has come to its completely predictable end. The House managers figuratively had their heads caved in and teeth scattered like bloody chiclets on the floor of the Senate as the president’s lawyers effortlessly and humiliatingly pureed their flimsy case and fed it back to them like so much rancid pablum.
As the impeachment case was publicly exposed as a corrupt and baseless frame-up, Trump’s approval ratings and campaign fundraising reached new heights. Similarly, according to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Trump’s acquittal also enhanced the electoral prospects of Senate Republicans who face difficult races in November.
Moreover, to the undoubted surprise and consternation of the Democrat geniuses who ginned up Trump’s impeachment, his trial generated a bare minimum of public interest. Not only were there empty seats in the Senate gallery, but the trial also quickly turned into a television-ratings bust as well as a major irritant to potential voters who were deprived of their daily ration of soap operas and celebrity talk shows. As the impeachment farce played out, the vast majority of everyday Americans who have actual lives to lead ignored the Senate trial and attended to other, more important matters, such as rearranging their sock drawers and stenciling their driveways.
https://spectator.us/terror-cells-britain-prisons-became-finishing-schools-extremists/
Sometimes it appears as if, over the past 10 years, the British government has been actively trying to destroy the whole criminal justice system. It’s like an evil experiment: impose a 20 percent cut in the prisons budget, meaning a 26 percent reduction in the number of operational front line staff — then sit back and see what happens. What happened was predictable, with disastrous consequences for both inmates and the public. As a previous Conservative home secretary once said, our prisons became places that ‘make bad people worse’.
Imagine a young man like Sudesh Amman arriving in prison after his first offense. He was already a drug user, known to have a cannabis habit. He was mentally unstable and radicalized by Islamist propaganda. He entered a prison that’s usually overcrowded, frequently filthy and with too few staff struggling just to keep people alive (themselves included) from one end of the day to the other.
Inside, all of his problems are not addressed but exacerbated. In most prisons there’s a rampant drugs economy that destroys lives and drives much of the violence. It makes the task of reforming offenders near impossible. The money to be made from drugs inside is extraordinary. The predators can access their customer base without leaving their cells. Mobile phones actually designed and sold for their ability to be stored where the sun don’t shine have handy apps to transfer the cash to the dealers. It’s also convenient for the dealers that many of the captive consumers have huge unmet needs with mental health problems. Finally, charismatic hate preachers are in close proximity to credulous, violent, addicted young men in search of meaning and excitement.
https://nypost.com/2020/02/07/trashing-america-as-racist-wont-help-democrats-beat-trump/
Trashing America as racist won’t help Democrats beat Trump John Podhoretz,
The Democrats are lucky the February debate in New Hampshire took place on a Friday night, when relatively few were watching — because if they wanted to deliver the message to the working-class white people who delivered the upper Midwest and the presidency to Donald Trump in 2016 that they should stick with him rather than voting blue in November, they did a brilliant job of it.
Tom Steyer, the billionaire who’s trying to buy a win Bloomberg-style in the South Carolina Democratic primary, issued a stark warning at the beginning of the Democratic debate Friday night in New Hampshire: Trump has the economic numbers that can help him get reelected, and Democrats are going to need to have a strong message to overwhelm it.
About an hour into the debate, they found their message: America, Bernie Sanders said, is “a racist society from top to bottom.”
One by one, the candidates echoed the message that “systemic racism” characterizes America. continue reading…
