Britain had their attackers, Australia theirs and in the USA...

New York State Democratic Representative Grace Meng is another possible victim of the game in Washington. She was walking home from dinner in the district when someone punched her and stole her Gucci purse

Police across the U.S. have noticed a recent spike in violent attacks connected to the came 'knockout' (click here)

The point of the game is to take a stranger by surprise and punch them 

Groups of teenagers seem to be the main perpetrators of the random game 

The game has caused at least two deaths

There are a lineage of holy men within the Muslim Faith. The Pope in Rome is not the only religious leader on Earth.

I would think by now the USA would have recognized the vacuum of which these leaders reside. I don't recall a convention of Muslim leaders ever to receive a reception at the White House. 

An Iraqi woman living in Iran holds a poster of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite cleric Photo: AP

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, (click here) one of Shia Islam's leading voices, has called for creation of new government that 'avoids past mistakes' in comments seen as a devastating blow to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

June 20, 2014

By Hannah Strange

20.47 We're going to leave it there for the night. Please check our Iraq page for the latest.

20.45 Iran's deputy foreign minister says that Obama's cautious response to the situation in Iraq is evidence that the US isn't serious about fighting terrorism, according to the Iranian state news agency .

Hossein Amir Abdollahian said: "Obama’s recent remarks showed that the White House lacks serious will for confronting terrorism in Iraq and the region."...

The West rejects the leadership of the Muslim faith globally. They do not welcome it and ask for cooperation, both in policy and eradicating extremism.

These leaders are the reason why the Islamic State are nothing but holligans. They have no cleric that leads them, they don't recognize the great leaders of their time, they simply convert the Quran into a governing directive.

Any religion has leadership beyond the holy texts. I can't think of one that doesn't. It is vitally important religions have such leadership to be sure their flock is in step with modern times.

If every human being practiced the religion without any leadership they would be living as people did 2000 years ago. The reason current leadership to any faith is important is because people need professions that were not spelled out in any holy text or they need direction on educating their children to today's standards. This is ridiculous.

The Grand Ayatollah al Sistani is considered the peace ayatollah because he MINISTERS his view and where the holy text applies. Iran has a Supreme Leader who is the leader of the faith as well as the government. He guides the elected President to what he understands as the best outcome of the people. The Saudi Arabia King Abdullah over sees two holy mosques. These people are important, but, except for the Jordan and Saudi Arabia kings the USA has little to do with them. 

President Obama speaks of disarming the young Muslims from violence and extremism. Fine. President Obama speaks English and he speaks these words at the United Nations. Did the Grand Ayatollah hear that speech? Did the clerics throughout the Muslim world hear that speech? 

President Obama is leading in the best direction for the people of the Muslim faith to keep in step with modern times and the idea of peace, but, does he know his words and ideas actually translate well to the people they were intended? 

The cleric stated he was not guilty, evidently he was not. Deportation from UK stands.

September 24, 2014
By Mohammad Tayseer and Andrea Gerlin

Abu Qatada, (click here) the Islamic cleric deported from Britain last year, was released from prison today after he was cleared of a second set of terrorism charges by a Jordanian court.

Qatada, whose real name is Mohammed Othman, was aquitted of charges linked to foiled plots to bomb Western embassies more than a decade ago, his lawyer, Mousa Abdullat, said by phone. The findings of the Jordanian court won’t allow him to return to Britain, U.K. officials said.

Qatada arrived in Britain in 1993 on a forged passport and had been in and out of U.K. jails for more than a decade before being sent back to Jordan in July 2013 to face trial. He was once described by a judge in Spain as former al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe, an accusation he denies.

“Abu Qatada remains subject to a deportation order and a United Nations travel ban,” U.K. Immigration and Security Minister James Brokenshire said in a statement today. “He is not coming back.”...

There is a movement to improve the quality of life of Palestinians. The activists that carry that banner frequently carry the accusation of being a prodigy of bin Laden. Even being found innocent of charges, Abu Qatada received headlines stating "Bin Laden's radical cleric freed."

Just food for thought. Are we making our own enemies and possibly fueling radicalism?

Palestinian Political Prisoners and Popular Resistance (click here)

Ebola needs to have an annual vaccine like the flu.

A girl cries outside the Island Clinic, a new Ebola treatment center opened in Monrovia, Liberia, on Sept. 23, 2014 after the death of her father and her mother by Ebola.

By Jon Cohen
...But talking the talk (click here) and walking the walk—or in this case, running the run—are critically different things. New cases of Ebola in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea are doubling every three weeks. Officially reported cases to date number nearly 6,000, with about half dying, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the actual figures likely are triple that because so many infected people never seek care. CDC modelers suggest in a new publication that if words don’t lead to action and nothing changes, 1.4 million people could be infected by mid-January 2015. Simple math suggests that slowing the spread will require an emergency health care response unlike anything the world has ever mounted....

September 24, 2014
By AP

A fire burns Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2014, at a memorial in Ferguson, Mo., on the site where a Missouri police officer fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown. Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson says the cause is under investigation. (Credit: AP / Jacob Crawford)

FERGUSON, Mo. - Anger (click here) spilled over Tuesday after fire destroyed one of two memorials on the street where Michael Brown was killed, a site that has become sacred to many in Ferguson and others nationwide focused on interactions between minorities and police.

How the fire happened wasn't immediately clear, but it stoked fresh resentment among those who question whether the shooting of the unarmed, black 18-year-old by a white Ferguson police officer on Aug. 9 is being adequately investigated.

"It's the same as if somebody came and desecrated a grave," Anthony Levine of Florissant, another St. Louis suburb, said as he studied the charred scene and shook his head....

It is going to be great.

September 23, 2014
By Carolyn Lochhead

Industrial-scale solar, wind and geothermal projects (click here) could be built within a few miles of national parks in the California desert as part of the Obama and Brown administrations’ efforts to combat climate change, under a mammoth plan released by federal and state officials Tuesday.

Construction of the plants, many of which could cover several square miles, would drastically alter desert vistas near national parks and wilderness areas, according to a draft of the Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, a joint state and federal project more than five years in the making.

But that would be offset by the climate-change benefits of allowing large solar and wind energy plants on more than 2million acres of the Mojave Desert, the report said.

The 8,000-page plan covers 22.5million acres of public and private land in the California desert, and was unveiled in Palm Springs by Interior Secretary Sally Jewell with Sen.Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and top state land management, energy and wildlife officials....

Turning a country's citizens into terrorists isn't necessary. Before the Home Grown Terrorist there was Timothy McVeight.

Deal with it!

September 25, 2014
By Rania Spooner

The Islamic council of Victoria (click here) has refused to condemn the actions of a man who was fatally shot after stabbing two anti-terrorism police, and has hit out at authorities for pre-empting the outcome of investigations into the tragedy.

Council secretary Ghaith Krayem has also criticised the government for adopting an "enforcement" approach to managing the threat of home-grown terrorism, describing underlying issues as social, rather than religious and in need of greater scrutiny....

Anti-government citizens have existed since the beginning of time. By introducing a social paradigm whereby 'certain' citizens are the most dangerous citizens will result in more domestic violence between citizens. It is a very dangerous paradigm. 

I suppose the best thing that can happen is to simply destroy every Mosque and jail every Muslim, right? 

Victimizing a segment of any free society only causes greater discontent within all citizens. These INDIVIDUALS are exactly that and most Western democracies have intelligence to find and route them out. That is how best to handle potential jihadists or suicide bombers. McVeigh was not that far away from being a suicide bomber, too.

The challege of any free country is to regard every citizen as important and vital while finding the criminals that want to do innocent people harm. Actually, I would think jihadists would be easier to find than a McVeigh.

All this paranoia is ridiculous.

These pictures don't tell the story? That's ridiculous.

They took out the jihadist's garage. That was the purpose and they succeeded. You know the garage where all the stolen American vechicles were keep? That garage.

Americans should know this attack on the jihadists' garages cost them twice. First to put the lousy stuff in Iraq and then to destroy it.

Lieutenant General William C. Mayville Jr. talked about the sites that were targeted.

WASHINGTON — The US-led attacks (click here) that began late Monday against terrorist forces in Syria are equivalent to what a senior Pentagon war planner called buying time for ill-prepared allies on the ground to finish the job.
The strikes are designed to weaken the Islamic State’s hold on its Syrian sanctuary so that regional allies such as the Iraqi army and Syrian rebels can take back the large areas of both countries that are now under the sway of the radical Islamic group....

It is so ridiculous to think of putting combat troops on the ground to take inventory of destroyed stolen American hardware. I can see it now, American soldiers climbing through the rubble to find the lousy stuff to count it while the people are so angry they turn IEDs on them.

NO. It won't happen. Satellite pictures better be good enough and realizing the detail that shows, I think we know exactly what is happening on the ground.

September 24, 2014
By Benjamin Weiser

NEW YORK — A Kuwaiti-born (click here) cleric who sat with Osama bin Laden in an Afghan cave hours after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and later became a fiery spokesman for the Al Qaeda leader, was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday by a federal judge in Manhattan.

The defendant, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, 48, who was the most senior adviser to bin Laden to be tried in a civilian court in the United States since the attacks, was accused of giving voice to bin Laden’s recruitment drive for new young suicide bombers....

The War of 9/11 is OVER. The country needs to end the AUMF.

School is not about obedience. It is about learning.

How the learning is achieved in a civilized classroom where diversity of thought is expressed is called TEACHING. There is a reason teachers teach and it is for students to receive information not parochial standards!

ARVADA, Colo. — A new conservative school board majority (click here) here in the Denver suburbs recently proposed a curriculum-review committee to promote patriotism, respect for authority and free enterprise and to guard against educational materials that “encourage or condone civil disorder.” In response, hundreds of students, teachers and parents gave the board their own lesson in civil disobedience....